The Cannibal Queen

by Stephen Coonts

  Writing books seems like an occupation more likely to make a lasting impression, until you’re in it and find out that the shelf life of a paperback novel is about a month. That’s it—a month on the shelf and the ones that haven’t sold are recycled into grocery bags. Hardcovers? Go to your library and look at all the best-sellers of yesteryear that nobody reads today.

  Before I get very much older I am going to build a house, one made of stone and brick and logs. I’m going to build it with my own hands on a mountain where I can watch the storms and look at the stars at night. That is what I want to do with my life.

  Sound silly? I suppose.

  I’m going to do it someday.

  There’s blue sky to the northwest between the thunderstorms, in the direction I have to go. I knock out my pipe and climb into the Queen.

  The southwest runway points straight at Wadena, so I go over town climbing at full power. It’s a nice little town, like a thousand others that I’ve flown over this summer. It could be in Texas or California or Illinois or anywhere. But it’s here, in Minnesota, with a little airport that has never been paved and an eighty-one-year-old active pilot as the airport manager. So it’s special.

  Passing between the two boomers the Queen gets a light rinse, not enough to even wet the plane thoroughly. No turbulence. On the other side of the shower the sky clears and the wind shifts to the southeast. Now it’s a tailwind. This was the front the briefer mentioned this morning. And a thin line of scattered thunderstorms was the whole shebang.

  The sun comes out and shines on the Queen’s wings. They look brilliant against the greens of the land.

  Flying west into Fargo, North Dakota, I notice the trees are no longer a forest. They’re in groves and woodlots between cultivated fields and hayfields. This is the eastern edge of the Great Plains. The western edge is the first upslope of the Rockies.

  This will be the fourth time this summer I have flown the Great Plains. This southeast wind will probably shift to the southwest, yet even so, the Great Plains will be worth it. Once a great sea of grass that supported millions of buffalo and thousands of Indians, today the plains are America’s breadbasket. Here the grain that feeds America and a large portion of the rest of the world is grown as the seasons cycle by with their sun, rain and snow. As old as the planet, this cycle is life to the people here, far from big cities and big city worries. Every hour the local radio stations give the information that these people need—the weather and the farm report. Natives of the big cities of the East regard the plains as merely dreary stretches to pass through, which in a way is sad even if it is understandable. This is America’s beating heart.

  I stop for fuel at Jamestown on the western edge of the intensely cultivated Red River valley, only nine-tenths of an hour west of Fargo. At the Queen’s modest rate of progress the airports with fuel west of here are far apart. And the wind has shifted, now straight out of the south. I’ll be bucking it south west ward.

  Still, leaving Jamestown I climb to 6,500 feet. The visibility is up to about 30 miles. The scale out here is huge, the landmarks far apart just like everything else, so I must get up where I can see.

  From almost a mile above the earth the view is spectacular, although limited by the haze. I follow a two-lane highway south, one with ranches arranged a mile or so apart. Thirty minutes south of Jamestown the road doglegs east at the town of Edgeley, but I am through with it. I strike off southwest for the town of Mobridge, South Dakota, on the Missouri River. I pass over an area used only for grazing before I get back to wheat country.

  Southwest of Ashley I follow an abandoned railroad right-of-way that is going in my direction. Not too many years ago the railroad was the only way to market wheat and cattle, corn and hogs. It was also the best way to travel and the carrier that delivered fuel, clothes, spare parts and machinery, and goodies from Sears & Roebuck. Then after World War II the roads out here were improved and trucks and cars became practical. Finally trucks could do it cheaper than trains, so an era ended.

  The Missouri River in this section of South Dakota is a lake. They dammed the river 70 miles south of Mobridge at Pierre, so today the Missouri here is wider than the Mississippi and long arms of water reach up the valleys. Yet all this water is between empty hills covered with yellow grass this late in the summer. A few roads, a rare house, and nothing else. Not a tree anywhere. Not one.

  These hills must look almost exactly as they did to Lewis and Clark when they came up this river on their way west to the Pacific, back in 1805. Thomas Jefferson sent them to find out what the United States had just paid France fifteen million bucks for. And Lewis and Clark found out: oceans of grass, mountains with glaciers, great huge valleys so big they stun the human eye. The United States had purchased an empire.

  Today Mobridge is a small town on the main drag east and west, U.S. Route 12. But Route 12 is not an interstate, not four lanes. It’s precisely two lanes of blacktop threading its way westward from Aberdeen and crossing the river here on a bridge, the bridge that gave the town its name.

  They just repaved the runway at the airport. It looks nice, but I’m too busy fighting the 70-degree, 15-knot crosswind to appreciate it. The landing isn’t pretty.

  The fuel man isn’t in the office. The only person there, a flight instructor waiting for a student, tells me he has been called. When the fuel man arrives we gas the plane, then he loans me his elderly Buick for the two mile jaunt into town.

  Signs on the edge of town proclaim that Mobridge is the Walleye capital of the world, “the Oasis of the Oahe.” They call the river Lake Oahe. The temperature on the bank clock reads 96 degrees.

  Rick’s Cafe in the heart of downtown Mobridge is the first eatery I see. Sure enough, they have a wall covered with big movie posters and publicity shots from Casablanca. I eat a bowl of chili with Humphrey Bogart smoldering over my shoulder.

  Halfway through a hamburger it occurs to me that I have just landed in the 48th State since I left Boulder on June 8. South Dakota was the last one.

  So I’ve done it! I’ve flown over and landed in all 48 of the contiguous United States in the Cannibal Queen. In one summer.

  I haven’t crashed. I haven’t had a major breakdown. I haven’t run out of gas and landed in some farmer’s potato field. I’ve left two credit cards behind and had to call and have them mailed home. I’ve trashed four pairs of socks and bought more. I’ve gone through 17 rolls of film and maybe have three decent photographs.

  Why? Because I always wanted to.

  I am a little happy and a little sad. If only there were four or five more states!

  Climbing out of Mobridge I fly south along the western shore of the lake, south almost to Pierre. I don’t see a boat. Not a single boat, a single wake, which amazes me. This lake must be a big secret. You folks in Tennessee and New York—bring your boat here and you’ll have a huge lake all to yourself.

  West of the river the hills are virgin prairie grass. In the valley of the Cheyenne River a few ranchers are raising irrigated hay, but mostly the land looks as it probably did when the first white trappers saw it in the early 1800s.

  The Cheyenne turns south, so I follow the Belle Fourche River westward for a few minutes. Finally I realize that I can see the sun reflecting on the hangars of Ellsworth Air Force Base at Rapid City, 40 miles away. I turn in that direction.

  The temperature at Rapid City is 103 when I land, a new record. Unloading the Queen and wiping her down drains what energy I have left.

  The air conditioning in the FBO’s office feels good. I stand in front of the blower and slowly come back from the sky.

  29

  THE FIRST SIX MILES OF THE ROAD FROM RAPID CITY TO MOUNT Rushmore has an eclectic mix of tourist traps. There is a water-slide emporium, two go-kart tracks, an aquarium, an antique car place that looks deserted, a factory making “genuine Mt. Rushmore gold and diamond jewelry,” and—saving the best for last—something called Reptile Gardens.

  Taking your youngster
to Reptile Gardens may well prove to be the highlight of your vacation. Here he or she can watch mesmerized as lizards eat bugs and snakes swallow mice. Then hourly for the next week you will be treated to the same question over and over again: “Why can’t I have a snake?” Put Reptile Gardens down as a must-see on your vacation list.

  After the last of the tourist traps the road climbs more steeply and winds up canyons into the Black Hills, which, in the finest tradition of American names, are neither black nor hills. They are mountains covered with pine trees with some aspen salted in.

  As a youngster I first became aware of the gigantic sculptured faces on Mount Rushmore when I watched Cary Grant in a business suit—he always wore a suit and tie—climb down Lincoln’s nose in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest. Remember that scene?

  The faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln are carved together in the granite cliff just below the mountaintop. Working haphazardly as funds and weather allowed, sculptor Gutzon Borglum and his crew spent fourteen years creating this masterpiece, and believe me, it is a masterpiece. You view the sculpture by looking up from overlooks on a hillside across the creek. The necessity to raise your head and gaze upward converts you to a mere peasant in the presence of magnificent greatness, which is no doubt precisely the emotion that Borglum intended you to have.

  Obviously Borglum was a world-class sculptor when he started this project at the age of sixty, in 1927. George Washington has the prominent place, on a projection of the cliff that allowed Borglum to do almost a complete bust. To Washington’s left, your right, and recessed slightly is Jefferson. On to the right in a crevice that makes the face the least prominent is Theodore Roosevelt. Lincoln is on the extreme right, on another projection of the cliff, but this bust is tied in with the others by the way Lincoln faces, which is almost toward Washington.

  This is the world’s largest sculpture. More importantly, it is one of the best, set here amid the wind and pines and clouds of the Black Hills.

  The morning I was there a lusty wind sang in the pines. Not many people, which sort of surprised me this late in the summer with Labor Day just around the corner. I had the windy observation deck all to myself for the first ten minutes I was there, then six or seven other people arrived.

  There are cracks in the faces, cracks visible with the naked eye. In the visitor’s center are photographs from the 1930s of the workmen using jackhammers on the faces; the cracks were there then too, imperfections in the rock. Apparently water gets into the cracks during the winter and freezes, so the cracks are getting worse. Even carved into living granite, memorials made by man are attacked by the forces of nature in the oldest process on earth, erosion.

  The completed sculpture was dedicated on October 31, 1941, just five weeks before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the nation plunged headlong into the maelstrom of World War II. So the sculpture is fifty years old this year, a year older than the Cannibal Queen.

  Washington’s and Lincoln’s presence on the mountain need no explanation. They are easily the two most important Americans who have yet drawn breath. The author of the Declaration of Independence and champion of the common man, Jefferson penned these words: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.… ” That sentence alone qualified him for the cliff, even if he hadn’t slickered the French out of half a continent when he was President or introduced ice cream to America.

  Teddy Roosevelt got his mug up there because Borglum liked his style. T.R. was not a great president. One needs great events, great challenges, and great enemies if one is to impress the historians. Teddy’s tragedy was that the nation was at peace and prosperous throughout his presidency.

  Yet he wanted to be great. In the visitor’s center is this quote: “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take ranks with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” Teddy took his own advice: he seized life with both hands, and Borglum liked that. I do too.

  There are no plans to carve more faces on Rushmore, yet there is room for a couple and the federal deficit is so big we’d never miss the money. Of course, we could always rescind the latest 25 percent pay raise our 535 congresspeople awarded themselves and use those dollars. They’re not giving us anything for our money—why not spend it on something worthwhile?

  My candidates for the cliff are Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, Jr. Although each man had his smirches, I think history will ultimately conclude they were the two greatest Americans of this century.

  Roosevelt had the crises his cousin Teddy lacked—the Great Depression and World War II. During his twelve years in office he indelibly stamped his personality and character upon America and our way of life.

  King used unforgettable words, personal courage and leadership to forever alter race relations in this country. He forced Americans to attempt to make Jefferson’s ideal our reality. We should put him up there on the cliff with Tom and Abe.

  Sitting at the overlook pondering those faces in the granite, one wonders if the sculptures will outlast the republic to which these men contributed so much. Our institutions look permanent to us only because of the perspective from which we are forced to view them—one day at a time during short human lives.

  The Soviet Union lasted a mere seventy-two or seventy-three years. The Soviet people are toppling the statues, destroying the icons, shattering the institutions that looked so permanent even a month ago.

  If financial bankruptcy is the harbinger of moral and political bankruptcy, the United States is well on its way down the road that leads to extinction. Our politicians regard elected office as a lifelong career offering power, prestige and wealth. They win it by selling their “friendship” to economic enterprises that contribute campaign money. They use their victory to live in a style that most Americans can’t even envision—great salaries, fantastic pensions, annual expense accounts of $640,000 each, exemptions from the laws they pass to regulate everyone else, a staggering list of perks—they’re like characters out of Gibbon. They make themselves impervious to attack by supplying government checks to the middle and working classes, checks the government must borrow ever-increasing sums of money to cover. Will our members of Congress, like the Soviet parliamentarians this August, someday find that they represent no one but themselves?

  I don’t know. The genius of the democratic system is that it is self-correcting, that it gives us precisely the government we want, no more, no less. But is this what we want? If it is we’re in big trouble.

  I wish I had a time machine. I would zip three or four hundred years into the future, pop into a bookstore if they still have those archaic institutions, and grab a handful of history books. I confess, I’m one of those people who cheats and scans the final chapter first to see how it all turned out.

  Of course, I could just come to Mount Rushmore in my time machine to see if three or four hundred years from now the inhabitants of this continent still revere Washington and Lincoln. Will those presidents still be looking at distant horizons, or will a future generation have used explosives or artillery to obliterate a hated symbol of a dead past? Those faces on the cliff would tell me everything I really needed to know.

  Later that morning I strapped on the Cannibal Queen for the final two legs of my Stearman summer—Rapid City to Torring-ton, Wyoming, and from there to Boulder. With the temperature at 88 degrees and no wind, I committed lift.

  After flying by Rushmore and snapping the camera, I wandered around the Black Hills a little looking for the mountain that is being carved as a statue of Crazy Horse, the great war
chief of the Sioux. And I found it, about fifteen miles southwest of Rushmore and six miles or so north of the town of Custer. Irony never comes in little pills, but in great doses.

  When finished, this tribute to the American Indian will be the world’s largest sculpture. The figure has yet to emerge from the stone but they are hard at it. Maybe in a few years …

  Flying south across the high plains I tried to put my Stearman summer in perspective. I have flown a long way. From an airplane almost a half-century old, I have seen America.

  Without permission from anyone, without a flight plan or a destination, you can fly any airworthy machine anywhere in the nation. There are some rules and regulations, of course, and while they are sometimes tiresome and intrusive, they are not onerous.

  In this America of 1991 almost every town of any size has an airport and someone at the airport has fuel to sell. Down the road will be a motel that will give you a clean room for a reasonable price. Nearby will be a restaurant that serves palatable food. Unless you are extraordinarily unlucky, you will not be assaulted, robbed or ripped off. You will be treated with courtesy and respect by friendly people who will urge you to return someday. And they will mean it!

  I never know just what to say when people ask me where my home is. My house is in Boulder, Colorado, but my home is the United States. Everywhere in the United States. I am as much at home in Savannah and St. Francis and Rockland as I am in Boulder. This entire nation is where my heart is.

  Often the problems that make news threaten to overwhelm me. The foolishness, the stupidity, the shortsightedness, the naked self-interest at the expense of the public interest, these things sometimes lead me to despair of my fellow citizens and our future. But from 2,000 feet above the ground individual hills lose their identity and the lay of the land becomes apparent. Our nation has weathered its first two centuries well. From this altitude that is plain. The future … well, the future belongs to those yet unborn. They will have to spread their own wings.