On Grandma's Porch

by Deborah Smith

  “I was just talking to him.”

  “What about?”

  “About what all I liked about being in college.”

  She dusted off one foot and jammed it into a loafer. “For how long were you telling him that?”

  “A couple of minutes, maybe.”

  “That was about a minute and a half too long.” She brushed the other foot and worked it into the remaining loafer. “I guess he figured you were bragging. He hates that. He doesn’t much like college or college students, either, but he knows I’m going to college next year so he’s trying to get used to the idea.”

  My head filled with images of all the bad movies I’d seen with stereotypical Southern pot-bellied rednecks toting shotguns and chasing their daughters’ boyfriends. “Don’t guess I made a friend of him.”

  “Don’t guess you did.”

  I slowed the car. “Should I just take you home? I mean, he’s not going to want to see me coming around anymore.”

  “Well, he wasn’t that mad. I mean, if he was, he’d have just thrown you out the door or something. You just got off on the wrong foot with him, that’s all.” She cocked her head, cut her eyes at me in a way that made them look even bigger and greener, and smiled. If I hadn’t still been so rattled by my encounter with her daddy, I’d have probably blushed. As it was, I still felt quivery inside even as I realized she was lying through her pretty, kissable lips.

  “But if he wasn’t that mad, why’d you go so far around him and drag me out the door the way you did?”

  “Uh—he smelled bad. You know, he doesn’t always use deodorant. It’s really disgusting sometimes. I came down and he like to have knocked me out with his armpit stink. Didn’t you smell it?”

  I humored her and she dropped the subject. Our supper at the Tenderloin Steak House was tasty, but the movie we went to was so bad we walked out half through it. We left the theater and drove two miles to the little airport managed by my uncle, who’d retired from the Air Force.

  The sun was long since down but the airport was well-lit by blue marker lights on the nearby taxiway, a full moon overhead and white office lights shining through my uncle’s window. Mamma had said he was working on a presentation to convince Rufus Purcell and the other county commissioners not to sell the airport land to a strip-mall developer.

  When I shut off the car’s engine, Jo Beth looked at me and said, “Are you taking me parking on the first date?”

  Visions of her daddy and his shotgun made me turn the engine right back on. “Ah, yes. I mean, no. I’ll take you home right now.”

  “No, silly.” She giggled. “You don’t have to do that. I was just funning you.” I shut the car off again and we walked around the small propeller planes. I told her their makes and models, and explained a little about how planes flew. She said she liked how the front of one looked like a smiley face. As I walked around the smiley-face airplane, she called, “Wait a minute.”

  When I turned around, she was barefoot on the reflective stripe that marked the center of an airplane’s empty tie-down space. “They sure used a lot of paint on this. It stands up a mile from the pavement.” She walked the length of the stripe, turned in place on one foot like a ballerina and walked back on tiptoes with her eyes closed. “You ought to kick your shoes off and try this.”

  “No—no thanks. Say, where did you learn to turn like that? Are you a dancer?”

  “I’ve studied dance since I was little.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t have thought you . . . ” I caught myself before I said I was surprised that a south Georgia farm girl would study dance. I’d already put my foot in my big mouth with her daddy. I didn’t want to repeat that mistake with Jo Beth.

  “Wouldn’t have thought what?” Her eyes opened and bored into me. My mouth went dry.

  “I—I wouldn’t have been able to do anything like dance. I’m not very coordinated.”

  “Neither am I all the time. Hold your hand out and help me keep my balance.” I did as she asked, but she took two steps and stumbled against me. “Wow, thanks for catching me.” She smiled.

  I knew she expected me to kiss her, but I couldn’t put her daddy out of my mind. I mumbled, “You’re welcome.”

  She looked at the night sky and the planes around us. “This is a nice place. You like it here?” I nodded “You sure know a lot about airplanes. So how come you’re majoring in regular engineering instead of airplanes?”

  “There’s a lot of demand for it and the money’s good.”

  “Oh.”

  Regardless of what she thought of my college major, Jo Beth liked me enough to continue seeing me. Her daddy was another matter, though. For whatever reason, probably fear he’d alienate Jo Beth, he never waged a frontal assault on me. Oh no. He chose guerilla war.

  For example, since he’d started calling me “college boy” he kept at it. He’d say, “Your mamma ain’t feeding you good enough, college boy. You need to bulk up so the girls will quit laughing at you behind your back.” Or, “Say, college boy, we need to spend some quality time together. How about if me and you go on an overnight snipe hunt?”

  At times, he would go beyond insulting me to making me second-guess myself. “Hey, college boy, you’ll have to forget half of what those egg-headed turkeys tell you in that place before you’ll go anywhere in business. You do know that, don’t you?”

  But it was when he abandoned sarcasm altogether that he hit me hardest. Once, while he was loading his truck to attend a bivouac for re-enactors, I said, “Isn’t this all kind of silly—a bunch of old men going off to play soldier. You’re not shooting real bullets, so what’s the point? And what about that bumper sticker that says you’re proud of the South? What’s it done to make you proud of it?”

  When he slammed the truck’s rear gate, I knew my words had hit home. I was glad for about a second. Then I was worried he’d hit me home. But he just stared at me over one shoulder and said, “College boy, I don’t see the point of arguing with you about my being a re-enactor. Some guys climb mountains. Me and my friends re-enact. But you want to know what the South has done to make me proud of it? How could I not be proud of it? Ain’t being ashamed of the place that bore and bred you like being ashamed of your own mother?” Then he drove away.

  Watching his dust settle in the yard, I felt as small and out of place as a liquor salesman at a Southern Baptist tent revival. I left and drove to the airport. There, I walked around the perimeter fence for about an hour, talking to myself, arguing this point and that about what he’d said. I decided that maybe, maybe he was right in his own way. I also decided that our relationship was destined to stay icy. I wish I could have foreseen what would happen to test me on both decisions. Then again, maybe it’s just as well I couldn’t.

  At the end of my sophomore year, I changed my major from engineering to aviation management. Also, with my uncle’s help and some of the money Marse Pop willed me, I bought a small airplane. The Piper J-3 Cub had been restored to its original 1946 configuration, and was complete with Cub Yellow paint and the drawing of a bear cub on the rudder.

  When I told Buddy about these transactions, he arched his eyebrows and grunted. “Nice plane, the Cub. I flew in one of those once. Jo Beth says you know a lot about planes.”

  Another change was my engagement to Jo Beth. It turned out to be one of the longest engagements in history, because Jo Beth and I didn’t marry until we were both out of college. By then, I’d paid off the bank loan for the Cub, earned my commercial pilot’s license and was working full time at the airport as assistant manager. My uncle, worn out from years of on-again, off-again fights with the commissioners, was glad for the help. I was glad for the work. My uncle and I shared everything from cleaning toilets to giving flying lessons. Jo Beth taught dance four evenings a week. During the day, she pumped gas at the airport to make extra money while we
struggled to save enough for her to open her own dance school.

  Buddy was struggling, too, and it had nothing to do with me. The details came out one Sunday afternoon when Jo Beth and I ate Sunday dinner with her parents.

  Through the meal, Buddy was his usual gruff, outspoken self. Afterward, we went out on the back deck to cut and eat the watermelon Jo Beth’s mother had refrigerated. Just then the phone rang, and Buddy disappeared into a bedroom to take the call. He was gone so long my mother-in-law left to check on him. He re-appeared first, looking preoccupied. She appeared seconds later, and asked Jo Beth to step inside to help put away the dinner dishes.

  I’d been around the family long enough to know this was code for “Something’s up and I need to talk to you about it, Jo Beth.” I knew that if Jo Beth’s mother had wanted me to know what “it” was, she’d have told me. I also knew Jo Beth would tell me later. Buddy and I ate in silence.

  When Jo Beth came out, she took my hand and said, “I need to walk off my dinner. Let’s you and me go to the creek and look for crawfish.” The creek was at the back of her parents’ property, hidden at the bottom of a shallow but steep-sided draw. We’d often gone there to make out when we were dating—yeah, I finally got up the nerve to kiss her—but it was also a good talking spot.

  Once there, Jo Beth shucked off her shoes and waded into the gurgling water. “Come on, slow poke. Get your shoes off and walk upstream with me.” Still I hesitated. “Look, do you want to know what’s bothering Daddy or not?” Moments later, we were side by side holding hands to keep our balance in the swift current and ankle-deep mud.

  “That phone call,” she began, “was from one of Daddy’s re-enactor friends. You heard about how some computer company from Massachusetts might build a new plant near here?”

  “The company’s name is Right Tech, I think. Why would that make your daddy upset?”

  “Well, the place they’re thinking of building is the only good piece of land around here for the re-enactors to do what they do.”

  “So?”

  “And the company would bring its own people down to run it. They wouldn’t be hiring anybody from here. But the worst of it is the county commissioners want to let the company have the land tax-free for two years. That’s what Daddy’s friend called to tell him just now.”

  “Tax free? Not for the rest of us. We’ll be paying extra to make up the difference, and we won’t get anything in return.”

  “Daddy’s so mad he’s going to the next county commission meeting to try to change those meat-heads’ minds.”

  Not only did he not change their minds, he managed to get himself thrown out of the meeting. Outside the commission chambers, a friend whose wife was a caterer told him more unpleasant news. Chairman Purcell had arranged to flatter a group of Right Tech executives and local big shots with a seafood dinner followed by a round of golf. The event would be held the next Saturday at the county’s upscale country club, where only the wealthy were admitted.

  As I guessed, that Saturday was a slow day at the airport. Right Tech, at our commissioners’ insistence, landed its corporate jet at Atlanta’s airport instead of ours. We made no money selling jet fuel. Worse, many of the local pilots who rent our airplanes were no doubt hobnobbing with Purcell and Right Tech instead of flying. Things were so quiet that I was even pleased to see Buddy come through the office door.

  As usual, he dispensed with the pleasantries most people found necessary. “I need you to fly me over the country club in about twenty minutes.”

  I checked the wall clock. “That’s when the commissioners will be kissing up to the Right Tech people on the golf course. Why go there?”

  “I’ve got a little greeting I want to give them, you know, an air drop, low altitude.”

  “Drop what?” The Federal Aviation Administration is persnickety about the dropping of things from airplanes.

  “Just a little patriotic display.” He patted the duffel bag under his arm. I was about to ask to see what was in the bag when he added, “What’s your usual rate?”

  “For me and the airplane, a hundred an hour.”

  “I’ll pay you three hundred.” He put the bag on the counter and gave me three hundred dollars in fifties and twenties. I eyed the cash and tested the bag’s weight. The object inside was light and soft, not likely to hurt anybody on the ground. I hoped. After storing the cash in the office safe, I walked Buddy to my Cub. It was the closest airplane to the office and had already been prepped for flight.

  Now a Cub is about the most basic an airplane can be and still be an airplane. It has big wings to lift it, a small engine to pull it forward at a modest pace while making lots of noise, a small fuel tank to feed the engine, a tail to keep the airplane steady in flight and a fuselage to hold all the pieces together. Right behind the fuel tank is a cockpit with two seats. The passenger sits up front with the best view out the windshield and of the instrument panel right in front of him. To balance the weight of passenger, fuel and engine, the pilot sits in back where he must strain to see what few instruments the Cub has.

  Once Buddy and I were strapped into our seats, I turned on the ignition switch located over my head on the left side of the cockpit, held the brakes and engaged the Armstrong starter by shouting “Contact!” My uncle, standing in front of the machine, swung the propeller. The engine spat once and roared to life. Five minutes later, the Cub wafted off the runway and I steered toward the country club.

  Buddy had said he wanted us to be low for the air drop, but how low was low? The FAA says a pilot can’t fly lower than a thousand feet over an open-air assembly of persons, or lower than five hundred feet over a sparsely populated area. Into which category would the feds put a golf course with golfers on it? Considering how much trouble my uncle and I had already had with government, I didn’t want to risk going lower than a thousand.

  Even the slow-going Cub ticked off the five miles to the country club in good time. I leaned to the right and opened the split door, raising the clear-plastic top half against the underside of the wing and lowering the opaque bottom half against the fuselage.

  “We’re almost there!” I yelled.

  “What bear?” he yelled back.

  We got that miscommunication straightened out as I spotted the country club. I could tell my passenger wasn’t ready to drop anything yet, so I flew the Cub in a circle to give him more time. He fumbled with the duffel bag.

  “Slower,” I thought he said.

  “Slower’s not a good idea,” I replied.

  “No, lower. Lower!” Suddenly, my control stick jerked from my hands and the Cub pitched nose down enough to make me come off my seat despite my seat belt. Buddy had taken control and I had to get it back. Knowing too well how strong he was, I put both hands on the stick and yanked. Unfortunately, he’d let go already to fumble some more with the bag. With no resistance on the stick, I hauled the little Cub almost straight up. Cubs don’t like that.

  “What are you doing?” Buddy yelled from up front. I didn’t answer him because I was too busy getting the nose down to a normal level before the Cub bit us by whipping into a fatal spin.

  Our gyrations made us overshoot the country club. They’d also put us quite low, around four hundred feet. I knew I could have, should have, climbed back to a thousand feet. I also knew that would take another three minutes at the Cub’s pace. Better to get the air drop over with and leave. I prayed no FAA hard-noses were down there with binoculars to see the Cub’s registration numbers.

  “This is it! Get ready to drop!”

  In the front seat, Buddy thrashed around with the duffel bag and then settled down. I assumed he’d freed whatever it was he planned to drop. I relaxed and concentrated on flying the sluggish Cub.

  As we passed over the country club’s fence, I noticed that Buddy had pulled out a Confederate battle flag that was
so large it took both his hands to control it. I thought, “Hmmm, that should get an interesting reaction from the Yankees,” and went back to planning our escape from the area once we made the drop.

  Then it happened. As Mr. Adams turned in the seat to drop the flag, the Cub hit turbulence that bounced the duffel bag over our heads. Mr. Adams grabbed at it and pulled it down. But since the bag’s strap had snagged the Cub’s ignition switch, pulling the bag also pulled the switch to “off.”

  The roar of the engine was replaced by the wind hissing by the open door and the clanking of the useless propeller wind milling slowly in the breeze. I froze. I’d never had an engine fail in an airplane at any altitude, much less one so low that I could almost reach out and grab leaves off the trees. Regaining my senses, I pushed the control stick forward to keep flying speed and tried to find a place to land. We were already so low that switching the engine back on, assuming the turning prop could start it, would do no good. We would never clear the huge trees at the far end of the golf course.

  “Hang on!” I screamed. I maneuvered around a clump of small dogwoods and aimed for a level patch of grass. But I was so nervous that I botched the landing, bounced high and touched down on a steep downhill slope that led to a pond. I pushed on the brakes, but the grass must have been wet from a morning watering because the Cub skidded into the pond and flipped upside down.

  The water was only a couple of feet deep and we were in no danger of drowning, but we had to go from hanging upside down by our seat belts to standing upright. Buddy released his belt and splashed into what had been the top of the cockpit. He righted himself and clambered out.

  Worried about the damage to the Cub and the fate of my pilot’s license, I unbuckled while bracing against the cockpit roof, tucked my legs tight and did a sloppy backward roll to land on my knees. From the outside, I could hear voices, then the braying of laughter. I dragged my soaking self from the plane to see a gaggle of commissioners and strangers I assumed were from Right Tech standing on dry ground. The object of their amusement was Buddy. He’d made it out of the Cub, but without his pants. His face red as a baboon’s butt, he groped around, no doubt trying to find his pants in the muddy water.