The Cannibal Queen

by Stephen Coonts

  I level at 3,500 feet and pull the power back. Soon I have stabilized at 97 MPH at 2,000 RPM and 21.5 inches. That is very good! And I have a crisp quartering tailwind out of the southwest and smooth air. My cup is full.

  Thank God I need no one’s permission to fly. If I kill myself the world will keep on turning. They’ll have a memorial service, the lawyers will divide my worldly possessions, such as they are, and the people who care about me will miss me. That’s all any of us ever get. And it will happen for every one of us sooner or later no matter how the cards fall. If I crash the only real effect on the cosmos will be the loss of one irreplaceable Stearman, but this rock will keep spinning on its axis and the sun will rise tomorrow, as usual.

  In the meantime …

  East of Abilene the land below is dotted with ponds and little lakes, all full. A cool, wet summer … I suspect this coming winter will be a real dilly. That Philippine volcano blew a lot of dust into the atmosphere and the sunsets have been spectacular lately. That dust should have a cooling effect.

  There are clouds ahead, a high layer. By the time I cross Eastland and strike off east-southeast away from the highway shafts of sunlight are illumining the haze underneath. The air here is moist. Already the land is a thousand feet lower than it was in Sweetwater.

  The land has trees on it now in woodlots and odd abandoned places. Over Stephenville I decide the sunlight shafts look like the pillars of heaven, and I scrawl that phrase on the chart. But soon the pillars disappear as the sky above solidifies. It’s gloomy to the northeast toward Dallas-Fort Worth. I came south to avoid the TCA, that sprawling toadstool of controlled airspace, and now I can see I avoided bad weather. Well, the forecast was for showers and isolated thunderstorms today in east Texas, which was one reason I started so early.

  I once spent four months in Texas, May through August 1969. I was a flight student at Naval Air Station Kingsville flying F-9 Cougars, midfifties-vintage swept-wing jet fighters. The engines had centrifugal compressors instead of axial ones so they were nothing to brag about even before the Navy de-rated them, taking a percent or two RPM off the top end, to make them last. And the final indignity, the Navy painted the fighters white and red to minimize the possibility of midair collisions. Still, they were jet fighters, some of them single-seat. For most of us these were the only single-seat jet fighters we would ever be fortunate enough to get our grubby hands on.

  Looking back you can see how crazy it was: Uncle Sam provided hundreds of twenty-three-year-old boy-men just out of college with real, genuine, honest-to-god jet fighters armed with four 20-mm cannons and real bullets and ordered them to fly these machines all over south Texas and have the time of their lives. And picked up the tab for everything. And paid these kids for doing it.

  The coin had a slimy side, of course—there was a truly shitty little war going on in Southeast Asia and later on we would be expected to go do our bit to win the thing for our side. You may remember that one—we lost it. The war killed some of these kids and cost others, the ones shot down and imprisoned as POWs, a price higher than any human should have to pay.

  All that lay in a hazy future during my F-9 Texas summer.

  I remember the heat. We manned airplanes baking on the concrete in the south Texas sun and humidity and almost melted before we got into the air. The planes had to be coaxed off the runway—climb-outs were long, leisurely affairs. The air conditioning in the cockpit merely delayed the onset of heat exhaustion. But the flying! Strafing with real ammo, air-to-air gunnery, dropping bombs, dogfighting, carrier qualifying, formation, low-level navigation, aerobatics—the flying was as good as flying can be.

  Everyone said an F-9 would not go supersonic. I had to try. I climbed to about 30,000 feet and with the throttle cobbed, rolled her on her back and pointed the nose straight down. She smacked into the Mach buffet and would not cut through it. At 10,000 feet I glumly retarded the throttle and pulled out. For once everyone was right.

  In Vietnam I missed those F-9s with their four 20-mm cannons in the nose. At night we would fly our A-6s at 400 feet over the Red River delta of North Vietnam and attack targets we located by radar. The North Vietnamese liked to line up antiaircraft guns along roads and dikes and open fire when they heard the sound of our engines. As the muzzle-flashes strobed and the tracers poured skyward, I wished the A-6 had a couple of those 20s. If we had been able to occasionally lower the nose and put a burst or two into an antiaircraft gun position, we might have had a lot less flak to fly through. Maybe fewer guys killed. Alas, guns were too low-tech for the A-6.

  And maybe that’s good. If A-6s had had guns, I was young enough and foolish enough to have tried to duel the guns at night at 400 feet over the delta. I wanted to. The gunners were trying to kill me and I desperately wanted to kill them.

  That’s what you remember most vividly about war—that urge to kill.

  Vietnam was long ago. So was my F-9 summer. Back when I was very young.

  On days off I drove around, visited little Texas towns like Beeville, Alice, Uvalde. … Small towns in Texas are like oysters, you either develop a taste for them or you don’t. I liked them. I liked the shady streets and the old cars and the soda-pop machines with glass bottles and the girls with the go-to-hell looks. It’s still there—all of it. Texas is still Texas.

  Passing Lake Whitney today the land below confuses me. Throughout the Midwest and Great Plains the land is surveyed into east-west, north-south tracts. Here the boundaries run about 240-060 magnetic. All the cultivated fields and fences and farm roads are skewed 30 degrees. Flying by the compass, it’s disconcerting to look out and see the land out of kilter. Wonder why they did that?

  Two hours after leaving Sweetwater I see Corsicana, Texas, looming ahead. I locate the field without difficulty and announce that I am making a straight-in to runway 16. The wind is out of the west, about 90 degrees cross, at about 12. I look at the chart and double-check the field elevation. Yep, only 448 feet.

  The Unicom freq, 122.8, is relatively busy with people announcing their location in the pattern and the runways they are going to use, but it seems few of them ever state what airport they are at. There are only three or four Unicom freqs, so in congested areas it is not uncommon to hear traffic from five or six airports on one frequency. Some of these pilots remember to state the airport but they mumble it, and the Queen’s radio is not very good.

  On final I spot a twin about to take off in the opposite direction on the runway I am landing on. He announces with disgust in his voice that he will hold for the Stearman. Sorry, Jack, but if you had said you were at Corsicana, I would have gladly gotten out of your way. Now you can wait for this kite to float in.

  Ray Rodgers runs the FBO at Corsicana. A tall, lean Texan, he plunks his feet on his desk and sighs as he looks out the window at the Queen sitting by the pump.

  “God, I learned to fly in one of those things,” he said with a wistful look on his face. “It was out at Charlie Wyche’s ranch. I was friends with his son. We got to flying Charlie’s brandnew Taylorcraft and he about had a fit. We hadn’t taken any lessons or anything and it was all illegal, but Charlie didn’t care about that. He was upset because he had paid $1,875 for that Taylorcraft and he didn’t want it wrecked. So he said if we wanted to fly, to go fly one of those $75 Stearmans. So we did. Taught ourselves to fly it.”

  “Seventy-five bucks?”

  “Yep. He went over to Pyote and bid on a lot of Stearmans. Got 250 of them for $75 each. They hauled in planes from all over and auctioned them off there at Pyote. Now Charlie brought those Stearmans back to his ranch and took the engines off and stored them in a barn. He stored the wings in another barn and stacked the fuselages on their noses down the fence rows. He bought ’em on speculation. Figured all the fliers returning from the war would buy ’em. So me and his boy had our very own $75 Stearman and we flew it all over Charlie’s ranch that summer.”

  “How old were you then?”

  “Sixteen. I was sixtee
n. Of course, nowadays nobody in his right mind would let a sixteen-year-old kid fly a Stearman. Worth too much.” He sighed again and glanced out the window at the Cannibal Queen.

  “Whatever happened to all those planes?”

  “Well, Charlie finally sold the fuselages and wings to some outfit up in Tulsa. They were making dusters out of ’em. They didn’t want the engines but Charlie made them take ’em. He didn’t want the engines either.”

  By the time I reach Tyler at least half the land below is covered by trees. East of Shreveport the land is all trees, with only here and there a pasture, roads like ribbons, towns hidden by the trees on their streets.

  East of Shreveport I encounter my first clouds at 3,500 feet, so I descend to 1,500. Visibility is ten to twelve miles, a clear day in this part of the world.

  Descending into Ruston, Louisiana, 30 miles west of Monroe, I get my first good whiff of the sticky-sweet odor from the pulp mills. Welcome back to the South!

  Ruston only has one north-south runway with a parallel taxi-way on the eastern side of it, but coming in I keep hearing people talking on Unicom about runway 34 Right and 34 Left. As I make the left downwind I am searching without success for the second runway.

  Have I got the right town? Appears so. The right airport? Well, this one is where the map says Ruston’s airport is and it has just the one runway depicted on the sectional chart. So what the devil is this right and left stuff?

  On the ground I find out when a Cessna comes floating in and lands on the taxiway. That’s 34 Right, fella!

  Airborne again, I level the Queen at 1,500 feet and head northeast for Arkansas. My route takes me northwest of Monroe, across Bayou D’Arbonne and the town of Farmerville. (Yes, Farmerville! And no, I have no idea what possessed these people to name it that. Maybe there was a banker or merchant named Guido McGillicuddy Farmer that they wanted to honor. Maybe they were tired of farmer and salesmen jokes. Good Lord, who can say?) Somewhere past Farmerville I cross the route that David and I used in June to get to Monroe.

  But the clouds are coming down. Now they’re just above my head. Visibility still pretty good though.

  But I am descending to stay out of the clouds. I’m flying a compass course, 040, and the way ahead looks gloomy. Oh well, the tank is full of gasoline—why not give it a try?

  The land below me is swamp with large trees growing here and there. Looks like miserable country for a forced landing, but the worst of it is that there are no landmarks or highways.

  When I pass over a river I look left and can make out a lake to the northwest. Good. That’s the reservoir at Felsenthal. I’m on course for Crossett. But I’m down to 500 feet. Visibility down to two or three miles. Where in the heck is this town? If I miss it by much I’ll never see it.

  But I hit it dead on. The first thing I see is a road leading north. I follow that until I catch sight of the pulp mill. Whew, that smell! But the land looks firm enough under all those trees. I seem to have cleared the swamp.

  But is this Crossett? And how low does this fog go? Should I turn around?

  There’s an airport just east of here. I’ll land there and call Flight Service. That’s a good plan. I turn and follow the highway leading true east. Minutes pass. It’s misting rain and the stuff collects and flows along the windscreens.

  But the airport isn’t there!

  Either I’m on the wrong road or that town wasn’t Crossett. It might have been Hamburg, ten miles away. But I was on course. Or was I?

  When I hit a decently wide two-lane highway running north and south, I swing the Queen north. Wrong choice. The fog ahead goes all the way to the ground. I lower the left wing to turn her and glance out the right side—at absolutely nothing. Momentarily disoriented, I look left. The ground is still there, but I’m too high. I drop her some and roll out heading south. I’m going to fly south out of this stuff.

  Just south of the Arkansas line the clouds lift. I am back at a thousand feet when I sight the town of Bastrop. If it is Bastrop. It should be, but what if it isn’t?

  I fly around the water tower of the pulp mill and look for a name. A forest products company! Whatever happened to civic pride?

  But there’s an airport where Bastrop’s is depicted. Okay. I give them a call.

  No answer. Terrific! But they have the name of the town painted on the runway. “Bastrop.” If I ever manage an airport, I’m going to do that.

  I fly over and can’t find the wind sock. When it goes bad, it all goes bad. I set up for the northern runway, 34, just like at Ruston. On final I have the power at idle and I’m floating. The wind’s behind me.

  I go around and come in on runway 16. The wind is out of the south. Tiny crosswind.

  The line boy motions me over to a pump on the side of the mat. “We’re about out of gas,” he tells me. “The truck is supposed to be here this afternoon but he hasn’t showed up yet.”

  “Got any left?”

  “Maybe a little.”

  “Well, let’s put it in and see if it’s enough.”

  We drain the tank into the Queen. She could hold another gallon or two, but that’ll do.

  I go inside and call Flight Service.

  “Go east,” the man on the phone says. “You won’t have any problems. Scattered showers maybe, but the ceiling at Greenville, Mississippi, is fourteen thousand feet. Ten thousand at Greenwood. Memphis has scattered showers around, ceiling at ten. Should be okay.”

  “I had a little trouble flying through Arkansas.”

  “Yeah, well, they’ve had rain and fog this afternoon. That stuff is moving southeast at ten knots. Shouldn’t be a factor.”

  It isn’t. I cross the Mississippi River at 1,500 feet just north of Lake Providence and angle a little north of Rolling Fork. Then I point more north and fly across Belzoni. A rain shower dampens the Queen but the clouds are high, at least 10,000 feet. Below is the Mississippi bottomland, flat as a pancake and intensely cultivated, cut up by meandering rivers that occasionally looped back on themselves and made crescent lakes. Spotted here and there are ponds in series, catfish farms.

  I land at Greenwood, Mississippi, because they have a Flight Service Station on the field and I want a look at the prognosis charts. Before I can shut down the man in the nonfederal tower asks, “We have a new man here in the tower. You have time to give him a ride?”

  The request is unexpected. I’m tired and it’s after 5 P.M., and I do want to get to Savannah tonight. But what the hell is the rush? Why not? Wasn’t fun the object of this whole trip? “Send him out.”

  His name is Ed Pitcock. “It’s like cockpit,” he informs me, “but reversed.”

  “You ever been up in an open cockpit plane, Ed?”

  “No.”

  “This’ll be the most fun you ever had with your clothes on. We won’t do any aerobatics, just fly around a little and give you a taste of it.”

  And that is what we do. Gentle turns and pirouettes in the afternoon sky. I let Ed fly some. He experiments while I sit back and relax. I’ve been in this seat almost eight hours already today, but having someone up front who has never seen it makes it all fresh and beautiful.

  The air is dead calm. I set the power and let the Queen descend at exactly 80 MPH. The flare works out perfectly and we squeak on all three wheels.

  Amen!

  Savannah, Tennessee, is not on the Mississippi bottomland. It’s on the drainage of the Tennessee River, a heavily wooded area of low, rolling hills. Nearby is the Shiloh battlefield, which I have come to visit.

  I arrive just as the sun is setting. No one answers on Unicom. No doubt they’ve locked up for the night. I fly over the runway and look for the wind sock. Looks like a light breeze out of the northwest.

  I swing out for a left downwind and set the power at twelve inches. The air is so smooth that the Queen comes around the turn like she was on rails, which I confess delights me. After 9.4 hours of flying today, I want one more good landing and then I will be content.

&
nbsp; The saint in charge of landings happens to be a former U.S. naval aviator named Roger Ball. He smacked the back end of the ship one bad Navy night and ended up in the spud locker, but they saved his bones and a couple miracles are attributed to them. So he got promoted to saint. That’s why every U.S. Navy landing Signal Officer says “Roger Ball” when you tell him who you are and how much fuel you have. He’s really praying.

  Tonight Saint Roger grants my wish. He gives me a bona fide greaser.

  A Cessna Citation, a twin-engine business jet, sat on the ramp in front of the FBO. The crew watched me taxi in and maneuver myself into a tiedown spot. When I came strolling over they assured me the place was indeed locked up tighter than John Sununu’s hatband.

  “Watched you come in,” one of them told me. “Boy, that Stearman was pretty against the dark sky with the last rays of the sun on it.”

  “She’s a good ol’ gal.’

  They broke out the catered food that their client today didn’t eat and beer all around. We ate it using the Citation’s wing as a table. Stale ham-and-cheese sandwiches and potato chips. I’ve never eaten better.

  And they gave me news. (A) Savannah didn’t have a taxi service. (B) Every motel in town was full. (C) The coup in the Soviet Union was over. Gorby’s back.

  “Over?”

  “Yeah. They say they caught some of those commie clowns on the way to the airport. Guess they were taking the first flight to Mexico. One of them shot himself.”

  How about that!

  Their names were Bill Greenwald and Chuck Davis. We got acquainted over beer as the twilight faded to darkness. They’ve read my books. They’re truly great guys.

  And they called their office in Columbus, Ohio, and the duty dog there got them rooms at the Pickwick Inn, a hotel run by the State of Tennessee at the Pickwick Dam 15 miles south of town. The inn sent a van. Bill and Chuck invited me to ride along.