by Homer Hickam
“No, sir, I was just riding her,” Elsie answered, taking the occasion to brush off her skirt. “We supposed she’d gotten loose from somewhere and I thought if I rode her, she might take me to where that was.”
The man pushed up his goggles and, though his face was dusty and spattered with oil spots, Homer saw it was a brown face, about the same color as the man’s boots. He gave that a quick ponder, a Negro man flying an aircraft, and then inwardly shrugged for he believed the same thing Captain Laird believed, that a man should be judged by his skills and productivity, not by the color of his skin or who his parents were, either.
“Well, I believe you,” the man said. “I call the mare Trixie. She’s full of tricks and one of them is untying her rope.” He stuck out his hand to Elsie and then Homer. “My name’s Robinson R. Robinson but most folks call me Robby.”
“Homer Hickam,” Homer said. “This is my wife, Elsie, who apparently is also something of a trickster because, until today, I didn’t know she knew how to ride a horse like an expert.”
“I learned in Florida,” Elsie said.
“This does not surprise me,” Homer answered with a jealous frown.
Elsie changed the subject. “How did you become a pilot?”
“The late great war, Miss Elsie,” Robby answered. “I was but a mechanic at an aerodrome in France but we ran short of pilots one day and since I’d practiced a bit with one of the instructors, they gave me a plane just like this one and a couple of bombs and off I went. When I hit my targets, they kept sending me up until the war ended. When I got back, I bought old Betsy here and we barnstormed all over the country. When I settled down, I started a crop-dusting company. Been bombing bugs for about ten years.”
At this revelation, Elsie looked thoughtful. “You’re wondering what the locals think about a black fellow in an airplane?” Robby asked. These old boys around here are cotton farmers and if I take care of their crops, I could be sky blue pink for all they care.”
Elsie walked to the airplane and ran her hands across the fabric of the fuselage and along the wing. Robby and Homer walked up just as she said, “I’ve always wanted to be a pilot.”
“Elsie, no!” Homer blurted. “You can’t keep wanting to be everything there is!”
“Well, I guess I can want to be anything I want to be,” she answered, then asked, “How much for a lesson, Robby?”
Robby grinned. “For you, Miss Elsie? Well, I guess I’d do it for a smile and a quarter.”
Elsie smiled. “I have a quarter, too,” she said.
Homer said it again, although this time with a lower and quite defeated tone. “Elsie, no.”
Elsie walked past Homer and he hurried to catch up with her. “I want to be more than you want me to be,” she said, taking big strides toward the Buick.
“That’s not true, “Homer replied when he caught up with her. “I just don’t believe you have any idea what you want. Are you going to tell me what ‘a good while’ means?”
Elsie did not answer. After going to the Buick and retrieving a quarter and handing it over to Robby, she began to receive instruction from the pilot on how to climb up and into the aircraft and what the various instruments were for and all about the rudder pedals and the throttle and the stick. With every word, Elsie’s heart beat a little more strongly. She really had thought about being a pilot, or at least a stewardess for an airline. She had often stretched out on the grass in the backyard in Coalwood and looked up into that narrow strip of dusty air that passed for a sky and imagined herself flying in some manner from cloud to cloud. If, she had proposed to herself, she kept flying from cloud to cloud, just as if they might be islands, she might fly herself completely out of Coalwood and into a different place, even to a different reality. But her reveries never lasted long because the locomotive pulling the coal cars would rumble through town and the clouds and the sky would be obscured by dirty gouts of smoke, and then the coal dust, whipping off the coal cars as they gathered speed, would spread across the little town like a gray cloak, settling down on roofs and seeping into rooms, and cloaking dreams as if they had never existed.
Elsie settled into the hard wooden seat of the biplane and stared at the dials and gauges, and put her hands on the stick that came up through the floor. “Don’t touch the stick until I tell you,” Robby cautioned. “I’ll get us in the air. When you get comfortable, I’ll let you take over.”
Robby turned the necessary switches on in his cockpit, then got out, grasped the propeller, and gave it a pull. The engine sprang into life and he climbed back in. “Are you ready?”
“Forever ready!” Elsie cried, her grin so wide it hurt her face.
Robby pulled his leather helmet down around his ears, then pushed the throttle forward and the old plane lumbered across the grassy meadow. When it got near a fence, Robby turned it around, then pushed the throttle to the firewall. With a puff of smoke, the aircraft rolled forward and gathered speed. Faster and faster it went until it hit a bump in the meadow that bounced it into the air. Elsie yelped in delight. When Robby put the biplane into a bank, its right wing pointed nearly straight down, she gasped at the glory of the sight of the meadow and the forest beyond and the red clay cotton fields and the Buick and Homer and Albert looking up. Robby leveled the plane and began to circle to gain altitude.
“Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!” Elsie yelled and it really was. Every circle caused the biplane to go higher and with altitude came more wonders. Now she could see a river she had no idea was anywhere near and a big house that looked to be perhaps an old plantation house with gardens and a brick-paved driveway.
“Are you having fun?” Robby yelled.
“Oh, yes!” Elsie trilled.
“Mind if I do some acrobatics?”
“What?” Elsie asked
Robby proceeded to dive the biplane and pull up into a stall, which put the aircraft into another dive, this one ending up inverted and in a partial inside loop. The unhappy result of this was that Elsie, who did not have her seat belt on, started to drop out of the cockpit. She managed to jam her knees into the lip of the cockpit and she cried out, this time not in joy but fright.
Robby took note of his error and flipped the plane over and Elsie fell back into the seat. “Sorry!” he yelled. “I should have told you to put your seat belt on. You must be sitting on it.”
Elsie discovered a leather belt she was indeed sitting on and latched it around her waist as tight as she could. She gave Robby a thumbs-up.
“Okay, let’s do a touch-and-go,” Robby said. He lined up on the meadow and descended until the biplane’s wheels kissed the grass and then gunned the engine to take off again. The maneuver produced a throbbing wave of energy from the engine that caused Elsie to gasp in pleasure.
“You ready to fly her?” Robby asked.
“Oh, yes!” Elsie shouted over her shoulder.
“Take the stick and wobble it to the right. Feel that? When you start to turn, make it smooth and use the pedals, which control the rudder. Okay. Turn right, press gently on the right pedal—that’s it! Give it a little throttle, your nose is dropping. Perfect!”
Elsie made slow turns and gained and lost altitude and then learned how to land, her first touch-and-go perfect. “You’re a natural-born pilot!” Robby called out. “Now, take us in. Land us.”
And that’s what Elsie did and she did so, perfectly. When the biplane stopped close to the Buick, Robby looked over at Homer. “How about you, young man? Would you like to fly among the clouds?”
“No, thank you,” Homer politely answered.
“I flew, Homer!” Elsie yelled over the engine noise.
“I saw that you did,” Homer replied in a voice that was diminished and sad.
The look on Homer’s face caused Elsie to lose her joy and her smile faded. Could this man not ever be pleased with her accomplishments? “You need to go up, Homer,” she said, climbing out.
“I’m not interested,” Homer said, but then somet
hing clicked in his head. “But I think Albert would like it.”
Elsie frowned. “That’s crazy! Albert can’t fly!”
“I think he can. And I’ll go with him to make sure he’s okay.”
Elsie crossed her arms and stamped her foot. “Albert is my alligator and I forbid it!”
Homer slapped a ten-dollar bill in Robby’s hand. “Let’s go, Robby. You’ve got some new customers.” Cradling Albert in his arms, he climbed in the aircraft, buckled up, and then looked out at Robby. “You either get in this airplane or I’m going to fly it myself,” he growled.
Robby, after an apologetic glance at a clearly fuming Elsie, climbed into the biplane and soon had it in the air. Over the cotton fields and summer rivers of Georgia, Albert flew and flew and flew, grunting in pleasure at every new thing he saw while Homer, his mouth a hard line, saw virtually nothing at all, since he was thinking too hard. Elsie didn’t need to tell him what “a good while” meant. As he flew through the wispy clouds with an alligator on his lap, he began to accept the truth. She was never going back to Coalwood. She didn’t love him. Their marriage was over.
After landing, Homer handed Albert down to an anxious Elsie. “My little boy,” she crooned. “I was so worried about you. Dammit, Homer! What were you thinking?”
Homer’s anger made him brash. “Thinking? Who needs to think? I just thought I’d let Albert fly for a good while.”
“Listen, Homer . . .”
Homer held up his hand. “Forget it,” he said, then turned to Robby and shook his hand. “You have done a fine thing, Mr. Robinson,” he said. “You gave Albert the sky.”
“Elsie, too,” Robby said.
“Yes, well, she always gets what she wants.”
Robby briefly took Homer aside. “You’ve got a fine woman there, Homer,” he said. “Full of adventure and sass. A woman like that is delicate in her feelings. I think you need to give in to her, if only a little.”
“Giving in to her is what I do best, sir,” Homer said, bitterly.
“You took that alligator up to irritate her, didn’t you?”
“At first that was why. But then I remembered he saved my life not too long ago. I thought I’d show him my appreciation.”
“Don’t give up on her yet,” Robby said and clapped him on the shoulder.
Homer shrugged. He wasn’t the kind of fellow who gave up on much of anything but he was also a realist. Wherever Elsie was heading, he wasn’t invited.
I was fifty-five. I had sold my memoir Rocket Boys to Universal Studios and they were making a movie based on it. Mom was invited to the set, where she met Chris Cooper, the actor who was playing her husband. I didn’t tell her they were calling him “John” in the movie because the screenplay writer wanted to call me “Homer,” instead of “Sonny,” and there couldn’t be two “Homers” in the film. I’d fought against the change and lost. “That’s what you get for selling your baby to the slave traders,” Joe Johnston, the director, quipped. He was right.
Mom hadn’t been told about the name change. All she knew was she was standing in front of a man dressed in the same kind of work khakis my father wore, and the same hard-toe work boots, and the same white foreman’s helmet. Chris had asked me for a few personal things of my father's and Mom saw her husband's Masonic ring and Bulova wristwatch right away. “I hope I do him justice,” Chris said.
Mom looked Chris in the eye. “Are you a good actor?” she asked.
Chris was a bit startled by the question. “Well, some say so, Elsie,” he said.
She eyed him up and down. “You’d better be,” she said, and then walked away.
I caught up with her. “Mom, what’s gotten into you?”
She was eighty-six then, and easily fatigued. We were in the tiny Tennessee town of Petros, which was busily pretending to be Coalwood. A scene was being set up in the yard of the house, which was supposed to be the Hickam house. Without asking for permission, Mom sat down in the assistant director’s chair. I pulled up a chair beside her. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“That house doesn’t look much like ours.”
“It’s just a movie, Mom.”
“Well, you’d think they’d try to get a few things right. What’s this about them calling Homer John?”
I winced. “I didn’t know you knew that.”
“You think I can’t read a script? I’ve read the whole thing. I don’t much like the way I’m in it, either. I wonder if Buddy knows about this movie.”
“Buddy Ebsen? I could let him know if you want me to.”
She considered my answer, and then shook her head. “No. After all this time, it wouldn’t be right.” She looked out at the movie people. “That fellow is a gaffer,” she said. “And that one’s a best boy. Those good-looking girls, they’re script assistants.” She sighed. “They were always the prettiest things when your father and I made that movie. He told you about that, right?”
“About you making a movie?” I couldn’t help but laugh. It was ridiculous.
She cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t believe me? Albert was in it, too.”
The assistant director came over. The scene they were setting up was ready but when he looked at his chair, he saw it was full of my mother. “You want me to move?” she demanded.
I could tell he did. I could also tell he didn’t have the nerve to say it. “No, ma’am,” he said. “I’ll get another chair.”
Mom saw Natalie Canerday, the actor playing her, standing on the front porch of the “Hickam” house for the scene. She shook her head. “If I’d known you were going to make me famous, Sonny, I’d have stayed younger and thinner.”
And then she told me about the movie she and Dad and Albert made.
PART VII
How Homer and Elsie Saved a Movie and Albert Played a Crocodile
37
THERE IT WAS.
At last! At long last!
Homer could scarcely believe it and, in fact, wouldn’t have believed it except there was the proof staring him in the face. The welcoming sign declared:
WELCOME TO FLORIDA, THE SUNSHINE STATE
There was a great big golden sun in the center of the sign and oranges all around the edge and a buxom woman in a swimsuit looking as if she was inviting the world to sample her pleasures.
Homer peered past the sign and decided the place didn’t look that much different from Georgia. Green, flat, and hot. “Well, we made it,” he said anyway. He thought something needed to be said to mark the occasion. He also wanted to break the silence that had been in the car for many miles.
Elsie’s contribution was, “We need a map.”
“Why? Right there’s a sign that points to different places including Orlando.”
“We don’t know that’s the best way. Maybe there’s a shortcut.”
“If there is, I’ll figure it out,” Homer replied stubbornly.
When darkness overtook them, and no signs had been seen for many miles, Elsie said, “We’re lost.”
“We’re not lost,” Homer replied. “We’re just not sure where we are.”
Elsie looked incredulously at Homer, then shook her head. “Truer words have never been spoken,” she said.
Morosely and hopelessly, Homer kept driving until they at last came upon a big red and white sign that said:
ENTRANCE
FLORIDA’S SILVER SPRINGS
RELAX AND REFRESH AT THE
SHRINE OF THE WATER GODS
The promissory note that the sign provided was inviting enough that Homer turned off in the direction shown by the arrow on the sign. Before long he came upon a pleasant parking spot among a stand of pine trees. Homer parked and Elsie took a deep breath. “I’ve always loved the smell of pine,” she said. “We never got that smell in Coalwood, only the stink of the train smoke and the coal dust.”
“That stink, as you call it,” Homer replied, “is the price of progress, that which paid for our food and the roof over our heads.”
“It still stinks.”
Homer tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, willing calm and dragging back his anger. He wanted to argue with Elsie, wanted to shout at her, but he just didn’t think it would do any good. “Let’s eat,” was what he finally said.
After a dinner made from the fixings in the trunk, Elsie, Albert, and the rooster bedded down in the car while Homer unrolled a blanket on the ground, pulled another one over him, and slept with the hope that it wouldn’t rain.
It didn’t, and the morning was also very nice, cool and misty. Homer, after climbing from beneath the blanket, decided a change of shirt was in order. After stripping to the waist, he was looking in the trunk for another shirt when he heard the putt-putt of a motorcycle, which soon drew alongside. Astride it was a slim woman in jodhpurs, boots, canvas shirt, and a beret. Her brown hair was cut short in the modern style. “Oh, thank goodness, you’ve come, after all!” she exclaimed.
“Ma’am?” Homer responded, his eyebrows raised.
“You are Omar, right?”
“No, ma’am. My name is Homer.”
“Oh, marvelous! We thought you weren’t coming. This is going to please Eric so much!”
Elsie climbed out of the Buick, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Homer? Who are you talking to?”
“Who’s this?” the woman on the motorcycle asked. “Oh, I see. Your agent sent an actress hoping for a gig.” She squinted at Elsie. “And I can see why. There decidedly is a resemblance. Well, come along the both of you. Eric’s waiting.” When neither Homer nor Elsie moved, she added, “Why are you just standing there? I said come along. Chop-chop!”
Elsie opened the back door and coaxed out Albert. Scrabbling down, he waved his head and stuck his snout into the air, sniffing, after which he rolled onto his back. Elsie knelt and rubbed his belly while he made his yeah-yeah-yeah happy sound and waved his paws around.
