The Cannibal Queen

by Stephen Coonts

  Ten miles east I look back over my left shoulder. The storm is now over Gallup, the leading edge over the field. Behind the storm is clear sky. If I had just waited an hour, it would have passed completely.

  I-40 takes me to Albuquerque. A desert storm looms over Mount Taylor north of my track and a couple darken the high ground to the south, but over the highway I have a relatively smooth ride. And Albuquerque is clear, with only a high scattered layer.

  The man in the tower is advising airliners of wind shears east and west of the field as I make a sedate straight-in approach to runway 3, but he informs me that all is calm to the southwest.

  “Thank heavens,” I tell him.

  There is only a little burble near the ground. The Queen settles onto her wheels thankfully. Or perhaps she is thanking whoever it is that has just delivered another sinner from the consequences of his folly.

  25

  THE AIRLINER DESCENDED THROUGH PUFFY CLOUDS INTO ALBUQUERQUE. Everyone aboard, including me, was reading newspaper accounts of the coup in the Soviet Union, but I lowered my paper to look out the window and check the clouds. I parked the Cannibal Queen in the hangar at Cutter Flying Service nine days ago and now I’m coming back to fly her. Gorbachev deposed, the Soviet Union on the brink of civil war, the stock market down 95 points at 9 A.M., and I’m going flying in an antique biplane.

  The talking heads on television at the airport cafe in Denver made me feel superfluous and gave this trip an air of unreality. The black type of the newspaper congealed the mixture to guilt. Maybe I should be at my office with the television on, sweating World War III along with everyone else.

  Newspapers and news broadcasts have an edge to them. That harsh reminder of the real world is what we go on vacation to escape, at least for a little while.

  I tucked the newspaper and my guilt into the pocket of the seat in front of me and left it there when I got off the plane.

  After the line boy helped me roll the Queen into the sunlight and fuel her, I had a major decision to make. Should I go east through the mountain passes or south down the Rio Grande valley to El Paso, then east around the southern end of the mountains?

  Decisions, decisions. I stood on the ramp and looked east. The cumulus clouds drifting eastward might not obscure the passes, but they would spawn thunderstorms that would be hard to circumnavigate in that rough country. South it is.

  A gent named Steve Jones was carefully inspecting the Queen when I returned from settling the bill. We visited a moment and he told me he owned the blue and yellow Stearman I had seen in an open hangar on the trip over from the terminal.

  “Been working on that plane for eighteen years. Haven’t flown her yet. Was going to try it this morning but I had starter trouble. Seems like it’s always one little thing after another.”

  Eighteen years! My God, he started on his plane in 1973.

  “Got her in a basket from a guy in Phoenix. Been a hell of a job, but sooner or later I’ll get the bugs worked out.”

  Eighteen years! If I were him I would have hired someone to haul the pile off to the dump years and years ago. Even if the pile were the Cannibal Queen. I don’t have that kind of patience.

  The Queen’s engine fired the instant I turned on the mags. She sprayed oily white smoke from her stack in a spectacular cloud. I leaned her all I dared but it still took a half minute before the white smoke ceased.

  She’s just glad to see me.

  Mr. Jones waves good-bye and I hesitantly flap my hand as I let the Queen roll. Eighteen years! The man is not human.

  Five minutes later she lifts off into the clear, high-desert air and I turn her south.

  The ride south down the Rio Grande valley is bumpy, but not too much so. Cumulo puff-balls ride a couple thousand feet above me in a layer that runs all the way east to the mountain slopes. The valley floor is cultivated, irrigated with river water, but to the east and west lies arid rangeland good only for lean cattle with a camel or two somewhere in their bloodline. But the plains and mountains look unnaturally green this summer. The cattle must be loving it.

  The sun coming through the gaps in the drifting clouds gives the land the look of pastels. No wonder several generations of artists have been enchanted by New Mexico. This place is enough to make Monet’s knees quiver.

  I encounter my first rainstorm as I approach Socorro. It is just west of town drifting east. I stay over the highway and get a spatter of drops for a few minutes, then I’m by.

  Just north of Truth Or Consequences—that’s a terrible name for a town. Only in America, Jack!—there’s another one. This one has lightning ripping out the bottom and is in the middle of the valley. A restricted area lies just to the east, part of the White Sands Missile Range airspace, and I have no idea if it’s hot or not. Still, I decide to try to squeeze between the storm and the restricted area.

  As I approach, the monster continues to hurl thunderbolts at the ground. What one of those zillion-volt charges would do to the Cannibal Queen and her intrepid pilot is something to contemplate, so I contemplate it as I try to judge the speed of the storm eastward. On the leading edge, in front of the solid wall of rain and right above the route I will have to fly, is a nasty black, scalloped roll cloud. What if one of those lightning shots comes out of that?

  I feel like a man racing a train to a railroad crossing. I’m getting closer, but is my 84 knots enough? Do I really want to find out? Is there hail in that malevolent brute?

  I wheel the Queen on her right wing and fly straight west. Before I am abeam of the trailing western edge of the storm it closes off the sliver of airspace that I was going to fly through.

  Lightning bolts continue to flay the earth as I pass behind the storm. And the ground over which it has passed is soaked, with standing water everywhere. The puddles seem to make an almost continuous sheet when viewed from my vantage point 2,000 feet overhead.

  With the engine droning I fly on past the town and south down the valley. When you fly an airplane often or take a long flight, you learn how she reacts to every control input, every gust of air, you develop a feel for her. The Queen and I renew our relationship as the minutes pass and the country rolls by underneath.

  The problems and concerns of the ground fade. Up here my world becomes the airplane, the instruments, the wind and sky. This is the charm that flying has always held for me. And once again it works—Soviet coups, bank balances, taxes, women, it all fades to insignificance as the Queen and I fly on through the summer sky.

  The flying becomes the reality. I land only to fly on.

  Perhaps it is escapism. Do I seek escape like the alcoholic or the hermit? The comparison seems unfair, and I am too much of an American male to wallow in self-analysis. The cockpit, the yellow wings, the way of an airplane in the sky are very pleasant, and that is enough.

  The airport at Las Cruces is five miles west of the town, at 4,454 feet above the sea. Coming from the north you cross a hummock of high ground, with the highest peak at 5,890, to reach it. So you pull the throttle back and skim the tops of the bare ridges and voilà! there lies the airport on the plain.

  The female on Unicom tells me the wind is calm, yet I am not surprised when I encounter seven or eight knots gusting from the southeast. Anything under ten knots is dead air to these folks out here in the desert. A Beech 99 airliner is circling for an approach as I turn final, so I clear the runway as soon as I can.

  Inside the Southwest Aviation office the lady who owns the place comments on my nice plane, so I sit and we discuss old airplanes for a while. Then the weather. She says it has rained here or nearby for a few minutes every day since July 1. And it’s unseasonably cool. What a summer!

  A few more miles down the valley lies El Paso, at the very western tip of the Texas panhandle. Just across the Rio Grande lies Mexico.

  I approach from the north at 7,500 feet and call El Paso Approach for a clearance through the ARSA, but the ridge just west of town is too high and he can’t pick me up on radar. The co
ntroller tells me to call him again when I am over the race track. What track? Oh, there it is near the river, just a mile or two north of the Mexican border.

  And then he picks up my IFF squawk and clears me through.

  I turn east with the interstate and fly through the gap in the mountain that the river cut. I try to stay over the highway as I take my first good look at Juárez. The western side of Juárez consists of endless blocks of houses affixed to the eastern slope of the ridge I have just flown through. The streets are unpaved. There are no traffic arteries, paved or unpaved. No trees. Not a one. Just hundreds of blocks of little houses on dirt streets baking in the sun.

  In contrast, the suburbs of El Paso on the slopes north of the river have paved streets and lots of trees, and the houses are bigger, with driveways and occasionally swimming pools. Suburbanites cruise to and from their subdivisions on boulevards. Heaven forbid that they should have to waste time idling in a traffic jam.

  Approach calls traffic, a jet airliner lifting off from El Paso International. I tally it, only to be told to avoid it.

  Golly gee, mister, I’ll sure as heck get out of the way if the crew of that jet plane is so foolish as to make a suicide run at this 84-knot Stearman, which will appear to them as a stationary yellow target. I’ll do the only thing I can, which is roll the Queen on her back and pull her nose straight down.

  I don’t pop off to the controller, of course, but merely give him a respectful “Roger that.”

  The jet glides by well under me and turns westbound. I take no evasive action. But I am ready.

  Just east of El Paso I hear Approach telling someone to watch for a Stearman eastbound climbing through 6,600 feet. Can’t be me, of course, since I’m at 7,500. I think no more about it.

  I-10 follows the valley of the Rio Grande for 50 miles southeast. The bottom of the valley on both sides of the river is covered with cultivated fields, but to the north and east lies gently rolling terrain and hills that rise to respectable little mountains, all of which this year are covered with green. But there are no trees. Even on the peaks, this country is normally too dry for trees.

  To the southwest, across the river in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, one sees ranges of mountains separated by relatively flat country. And through the gap in the mountain chains, one sees a great sea of sand. Beyond the mountains and sand dunes are dry riverbeds, salt flats, arid hills and occasional villages. Normally that is one of the most inhospitable desert hells on this continent. It looks benign just now due to all the rain, but the sand sea is a giveaway.

  Past Fort Hancock the highway turns east, and today two small thunderstorms stand sentinel. Following the highway I go between them and across a low pass, then cross above the town of Sierra Blanca. This town is a monument to developers’ hubris. Just east of the houses and paved streets is a huge section of dirt streets ready for development, a section bigger than the town of Sierra Blanca. It looks like a developer went crazy with borrowed money. Where the thousands of people will come from to buy lots and build homes in those sprawling subdivisions is a mystery, one that looks unsolvable from 7,500 feet on a Monday evening.

  The divided highway and the occasional cluster of homes and gasoline stations every 30 miles are the only signs of life in this country. To my left I can see Guadalupe Peak at 8,749 feet, but beyond Guadalupe the sky is cloudy. To the right are more mountains and haze with a dark spot here and there. When one sees how empty this country is still, over a hundred years after the Indians were dispossessed, one wonders how a stone-age people survived here without horses or firearms or engines.

  Imagine for a moment that you were here with your family on foot, and the highway and towns weren’t. It’s just you and your spouse and children finding water, finding food, finding shelter. The quest for these three necessities occupied your ancestors and your parents, will fill your life, and will fill the lives of your children and their children. These three things are all there are.

  Most Americans can’t imagine being in that situation. Yet just south of the Rio Grande are millions of people only one step removed from that.

  I am thinking of survival when I survey the fuel sight-gauge and eye the chart. The towns—villages—are 30 miles or so apart, the airports more so. Ahead lies Van Horn with the Culberson County Airport and 80 miles beyond, the airport at Pecos. This empty land doesn’t seem to be the place for a prudent man to try to stretch a tank of gas.

  I call Van Horn on 122.8. No answer. My Central States Flight Guide is in the baggage compartment. Maybe the field is unattended. I call a second time.

  After the third call I announce that I will overfly the field and look for the wind sock. Now someone answers. “Calling Van Horn, are you going to land?”

  “Yes, if they have gas.”

  “They have it. A nice old lady runs the place.”

  I spot a column of smoke on the western edge of town trailing off to the northeast. “Looks like the wind is out of the southwest. I’ll make a left downwind entry for the southwest runway.”

  “That’s runway Two One,” the man on.the radio says. “I’m a mile behind you.”

  “You can go first if you want. I’m pretty slow.”

  “I’ll follow you.”

  So I make the approach. Rolling out I look up and another biplane is crossing the field to the downwind. So that’s who I was talking to.

  I shut the Queen down by the fuel pump. One other plane is on the ramp. I am out of the cockpit in time to watch the biplane taxi in, and I recognize it. This plane is none other than the most-photographed Stearman in the world. The name on the side is that of its owner, airshow stunt pilot Earl Cherry.

  When the engine dies I walk over. “You Earl Cherry?”

  The sun-burned face grins at me. “No. I’m Bryan Regan. I work for Earl.”

  When he is out of the plane, we shake hands. “I followed you all the way from El Paso and couldn’t catch you,” he says. “I decided if you were landing here, I would too.”

  I am delighted. A beautiful day of flying topped off with an evening in the company of another gypsy of the sky—what a day!

  Earl Cherry performed in an airshow at Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego over the weekend, and Regan was flying the plane back to Lafayette, Louisiana, Cherry’s home base. He started Sunday in Miramar and spent last night in Tucson. Today he caught up with the Jet Commander carrying Cherry and the rest of the entourage at El Paso and spent the afternoon helping repair an alternator. He told me all this as we fueled the planes and the FBO lady watched.

  Her name was Rose Marie Budd. Rosebud. On her wall hung an autographed photo of Bryan at the controls of Cherry’s Stearman, General Smoke. He’d been here before.

  She proffered the keys to the courtesy car and we drove off for town trailing smoke, still talking and getting acquainted.

  In his midthirties, Bryan Regan has one of the world’s great flying jobs. He flies Cherry’s Stearman to and from airshows and helps with the mechanical work. Ignoring the Red Baron Pizza pilots, who also give rides and airshow performances, Regan may be the only pilot in the nation.being paid to fly a Stearman cross-country. Maybe the only one in the world.

  Of course I was curious about General Smoke.The Pratt & Whitney R-985 450-HP engine burns 18 gallons per hour in cruise at 105 MPH indicated, but to my surprise, the plane carries only a 46-gallon tank. “You get two hours and that’s all you get,” Bryan told me. “One time my first summer (this is his third season as a Stearman ferry pilot) I tried to stretch it. After I put in 45.1 gallons at the pump that time, I got religion. I even set it down on a highway once, about thirty miles east of Van Horn, when the headwind got too bad. A truck driver gave me a ride to the crossroads filling station and helped me put enough gas in it to get to Van Horn.”

  Although the General is equipped with two VOR receivers and a Loran, it is not IFR capable. It lacks an artificial horizon indicator. The Loran is a new addition and is worth its weight in gold, Bryan felt.
If my fuel situation were as critical as his, I would have to agree. Used for many years by ships to navigate at sea, Loran has only in the last ten years or so been married to a computer chip and adapted for use in airplanes.

  “You know what IFR means, don’t you?” Regan asked. “I follow roads.”

  We talked about landings. Bryan liked wheel landings when he first began flying the General but now he is an advocate of the full-stall, three-point landing. This opinion jibed with my prejudices and I beamed complacently.

  We finally got to bed around ten o’clock after discussing airshows and Cherry’s female wingwalkers and the writer’s life. I slept like a baby.

  Tuesday we got an early start. After a 5 A.M. wake-up call and a careful look at the map on the Weather Channel, we ate breakfast in the same cafe where we’d had dinner, filled up Rosebud’s courtesy car and drove out to the airport. The morning was a cool 69 degrees here at 4,000 feet above sea level with not a cloud in the sky. Dew covered the Cannibal Queen.

  We said our good-byes and Bryan fired up the General first. “I’ll be here a little while yet,” he informed me before he engaged the starter. “Takes a while to warm up eight gallons of oil.”

  And it did. While he was idling at the end of the runway, I said good-bye to Rosebud, finished my pipe, completed my preflight, and manned up. As I taxied out Bryan took the runway. He asked on the radio, “Steve, you ever been saluted by a Stearman?”

  I confessed I hadn’t.

  As he rolled he toggled the General’s airshow smoke system. A cloud of white smoke poured from the exhaust and lingered in the morning air. Bryan used all those horses at his command to pull up in a sharp climbing left turn still trailing smoke. Heading eastbound he killed it.

  “Thanks a lot,” I told him, and meant it. As the Queen warmed up I watched General Smoke shrink to a dot. When the smoke had drifted clear of the runway I lined up the Queen and shoved the throttle forward. On the roll the water from the dew came pouring off the wings.