The Year the Lights Came On

by Terry Kay

  “Naw.” Then: “Wait a minute. Yeah. Colin’s gonna love this. That skinny little Megan’s in there. Sure is.”

  Megan. I had seen her at church, but I had not spoken to her since the day at Sosbee’s Spring. I prayed she would stay in the store. I prayed Dover would drive up. I prayed for the face of Megan to stay buried in my memory.

  “Colin? You hear me?” Paul repeated. “Megan’s in there.”

  “So?”

  “So, I thought you’d like to know, that’s so.”

  “What’d I care?”

  “I bet she’s butterin’ up to Dupree.”

  I could feel Megan’s face begin to slip out of its hiding. Pale green eyes, hair as blond as a full moon.

  “Hey, look at Colin. He’s blushing.” Otis snickered.

  “Otis, you better watch it.”

  “C’mon, Colin, what’s the matter? Hey, boy, you gettin’ red, you know it.”

  “Otis, by granny…”

  “Stop it,” Wesley said firmly. “No need to go kiddin’ him, Otis. It’ll just make him mad, and he’ll start fighting and I’ll have to take him home.”

  “Aw, I was just kiddin’,” Otis said. “She’s not in there.”

  “Well, kid about somethin’ else.”

  Otis looked at R. J. and Paul for support. Both of them turned away and started kicking at the gravel beside the water oak.

  “Hey, I didn’t mean nothin’,” apologized Otis.

  “Well,” I said, “me, neither. Let Dupree have her. Don’t make no difference to me.”

  Someday, I thought, I am going to grow and I’ll order a Charles Atlas muscle-building course and I’ll kick Dupree Hixon from one end of Emery to the other. He would regret stealing my girl.

  Dover and Freeman arrived in Dover’s Captain Marvel Chevrolet pickup. They had packed an ice chest with hot dogs and Coca-Colas and potato chips, and Dover had made cabbage slaw that spilled when he tried to cram it into the chest, and the slaw and ice water slopped together in a sick, cold mayonnaise soup.

  “Don’t worry about nothin’,” Dover said. “There’s enough left for everybody.”

  Dover made me sit in the cab with him. If anything happened to anyone, it wouldn’t happen to the smallest and youngest of the group. I had become accustomed to such treatment, but it was always awkward and embarrassing, and Dover tried to compensate by telling dirty jokes as we bounced down Highway 17 toward Elberton.

  “I never been to that airport,” Dover confided, “but I got the directions from Hugh Spencer. He run the bulldozer that scraped out the runway.”

  The directions Dover had scrawled on a piece of paper showed the airport was on the south rim of Elberton, off Highway 17, at the end of a road that had been gravel-topped to encourage the post-war airplane industry, an industry that was more a symbol of progress than a necessity. Every town with a county courthouse had an airport, and on Sundays small, colorful airplanes crisscrossed rural skies like odd, visiting birds.

  The gravel-top road ended at the Elbert County Airport, twenty acres of level land with a makeshift hangar and a red-clay landing strip that had been peeled out of thin, gray topsoil. Four or five Piper Cubs lined the runway and were guy-wired to the ground by steel cords and pegs, with wooden stops shoved snug against the wheels. Brady Dasher’s two stunt planes were parked in front of the hangar, and a body was half-buried in the engine of one of the planes, making a final check on the motor. There were forty or fifty cars already parked in a pasture behind the hangar when Dover paid his dollar and eased his truck through the narrow opening of a plank-fence gate.

  “Lordy, Lordy,” Dover exclaimed. “You can feel it, can’t you? We are gonna see somethin’ today, and I will flat-out guarantee it. Wonder where Willie Lee is?”

  Willie Lee saw us and nodded. He was double-nailing the supports that held the World’s Smallest Runway to the top of Brady Dasher’s 1947 Ford.

  “Nail it down good, Willie Lee,” shouted Dover.

  “It’s gonna fall apart, Willie Lee,” predicted Freeman.

  Willie Lee turned his back. We were his friends, but we were white, and he could not be certain our friendship would be understood by strangers.

  “See you later, Willie Lee,” I called, as Dover led us away to the hangar.

  The crowd was festive, a circus crowd with circus fever. Some of the men were sneaking sips of beer and moonshine whiskey at the trunks of their cars, while their women grouped and pretended not to notice. Children played tag, weaving and ducking and laughing like frisky baby animals discovering the ticklish joy of running. Aubrey Hill, who had been a p-47 pilot in World War II, sat in a cane-bottom straight chair and answered questions about flying, and what the crowd could expect from Brady Dasher. Brady and he had become friends, Aubrey said, and they had spent hours plotting the risk of landing a Piper Cub on a platform latched to a car. Aubrey set the odds at 80-20 in favor of success.

  “Things is about to get started. Boy, I can feel it already,” Dover exclaimed, leading us to a fence in front of the airplane.

  Harold Dasher grabbed the propeller blade of the Piper Cub he had been attending and yanked, firing the motor. It sputtered and choked, belched smoke and died. Harold walked around to the side of the plane, conversed briefly with a short, balding mechanic who was sitting in the cockpit, and then he motioned for Brady and a radio announcer named Floyd Alewine to join him. The three huddled and talked in low, mumbled tones. Brady gestured toward the plane like a mad Gypsy, and you could tell he was questioning his brother’s genius for coping with mechanical objects. Floyd nodded authoritatively and kept making negative motions with his hands. The conference caught the attention of everyone at the airport and the crowd quieted to a whisper. Finally, Brady kicked at the dirt and stalked away. Harold removed a screwdriver from his hip pocket and stuck his arm down into the motor of the ailing Piper Cub. Floyd walked over to a table in front of the crowd and picked up his loudspeaker microphone. He performed a squawking “Testing, testing, testing” routine. Then he cleared his throat.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Floyd began in his deep bass announcer’s voice. “We’ve encountered something of a minor problem and we ask for your patience. There will be an air show, and we guarantee it. Even if it involves some risk and danger on the part of the members of the Dasher Brothers Flying Circus. It seems the engine of Brady’s favorite Piper Cub has the summer droops, and just plain won’t run like it’s supposed to, but, ladies and gentlemen, Brady Dasher is bound and determined to fly that plane.”

  Floyd paused and cupped his hand over the microphone. He motioned everyone’s attention to Brady Dasher, who had walked out to the center of the red-clay runway and was standing with his back to the audience, hands on hips, head bowed, a red scarf drooped about his neck.

  “As you can tell,” Floyd continued in a voice that would tell secrets, “Brady’s a determined man. Now, let’s see how brother Harold is doing…” Floyd turned his head toward Harold and the Piper Cub. Every head in the audience swiveled with Floyd’s. “How about it, Harold?” Floyd called inquisitively. “Is Old Faithful finished for the day, or can you get her going?”

  Harold gave a thumbs-up signal and caught the propeller of the Piper Cub.

  “Well, we’re about to see, folks,” Floyd said, lowering his voice. “Harold says thumbs-up, everything is in order. Now, if he didn’t get his spark plug wires crossed…”

  Harold signaled to the mechanic sitting in the cockpit, then he yanked the blade. The engine hissed and the propeller rolled and stopped. Harold tried again. A loud pop exploded from somewhere in the motor and a circle of black smoke whirled upward, like a volcano erupting. The propeller twirled, slowed, kicked again, and, suddenly, the motor jumped with life.

  “There it is, ladies and gentlemen. There it is,” Floyd cried into his microphone. “How about that, Brady?”

  Harold’s success with the Piper Cub pleased Brady Dasher. The sound of the motor was a cue and Brady raised hi
s arms above his head in a melodramatic salute to the air gods. He strolled across the runway, buttoning his blue gabardine dress suit and flipping his red scarf in the wind. With each step, Brady acknowledged the applauding crowd like a general reviewing his troops. He had the style and strut of a matinee idol, and by the time Brady reached his waiting plane there was no doubt that Charles Lindbergh didn’t know enough about flying to qualify as Brady’s copilot.

  Floyd had begun a loud, excitable account of Brady’s narrow escapes from death, as Brady taxied his plane out onto the runway. “…And five times, our pilot has crash-landed his plane without ever getting so much as a briar scratch. Yessir, ladies and gentlemen, this is one of the four or five greatest daredevil pilots ever to climb into a cockpit. And today…”

  Floyd’s narrative was interrupted by Harold, who tugged at Floyd’s sleeve and whispered something into his ear. Floyd’s body slumped, and Harold nodded gravely. The crowd leaned forward, trying to hear something that had already been said and lost in the sputtering roar of Brady’s Piper Cub. Floyd dropped his microphone on the table and mechanical pain thundered through the loudspeakers. Harold grabbed Floyd’s arm and cried something inaudible. Floyd ran his hand through his hair in a desperate attempt to stimulate his brain, and Harold seemed to panic. At that precise moment, Brady released his Piper Cub and it began to roll down the runway. Harold screamed, “No—no—oh, no.” He leaped away from the table and began to run and stumble toward the moving airplane. Fear seized the crowd of onlookers.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” a woman sighed.

  The plane was gathering speed and Harold made a valiant lunge to grab a wheel, and everyone knew that Brady Dasher was riding a Death Plane. It had to be that. Harold’s lunge missed by one hundred feet and only a man completely insane would make such a ridiculous effort.

  Brady’s Piper Cub lifted gracefully off the ground, began to rise, then dipped dangerously and did a half-roll to the left. Harold lay on the ground, his arms covering his head.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen. Your attention, please,” Floyd begged. “A terrible thing. A terrible thing. Harold Dasher has just discovered that he used the wrong drums in fueling Brady’s plane. Brady Dasher is flying on kerosene instead of gasoline.”

  The crowd oohed and stepped back in unison.

  “We have absolutely no idea what to expect,” wailed Floyd. “Let’s pray that the Almighty is flying with Brady.”

  “Ooooooooooooh.”

  A woman covered her eyes with her hands and began to sway.

  “Look. Look,” Floyd shouted over the loudspeaker.

  The Piper Cub fought to climb. It sputtered, dropped, tilted, climbed again. A thin wisp of smoke trailed its blue ribbon from the engine.

  “Oooooooooooooh.”

  “Is it on fire? Harold? Harold? Is Brady’s plane on fire?” Floyd’s voice cracked, sputtered, dropped, tilted, and rose with Brady’s plane. Harold did not answer. Harold had rolled into a ball in the red dirt.

  The plane climbed laboriously, inching its way upward. A second ribbon of smoke unfurled from the engine. Then another.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I must ask you. Will this be Brady Dasher’s last climb into the skies? Has the charmed life of the daredevil finally met its destiny? How will Brady Dasher ever escape? And you must remember, he does not have a parachute…”

  “Don’t worry about nothin’, boys,” Dover said. “Don’t worry about nothin’. If he goes down, it’s gonna be in some cow pasture, and you can bet on it. Shoot, them pilots know what to do.”

  I looked around. A woman had fainted and two men were fanning her with their straw hats. Groups of women were gathering children and retreating to the safety of their cars. Aubrey Hill was leaning back in his cane-bottom straight chair, arms folded across his lap, and laughing.

  “Dover, why’s Mr. Hill laughin’?” I asked.

  “He ain’t laughin’,” Dover replied, as he strained to see Brady’s plane.

  “He is. He is so laughin’.”

  Dover looked quickly toward Aubrey Hill. “Well, he is. He sure is.”

  Dover caught me by the shoulders with both hands and guided me over to Aubrey Hill.

  “What’s goin’ on, Aubrey?” asked Dover. “What’s so funny?”

  “Ever’thing,” Aubrey Hill answered. “Brady’s got everybody scared to death and he’s doin’ nothin’ but cuttin’ up.”

  “Cuttin’ up?”

  “That’s what I said, Dover. Cuttin’ up. Havin’ a good time. Look at that.”

  The Piper Cub nosed up, its tail section folding underneath its wings until it seemed to stall. Then it flopped over upside down and began plummeting toward the ground in a nose dive.

  “Ooooooooooo-o-o-oh.”

  Suddenly, the Piper Cub snapped and rolled upward, leaving a V-shaped smoke trail, thin as a scratch across the sky.

  “Ladies and gentlemen! Ladies and gentlemen! Brady Dasher is in the fight of his life. Can he do it? Can he manage to control his crippled airplane and bring it down?” Floyd was standing on his table, directing the oohs and aahs of the crowd, coaxing them into trembling.

  The plane was a dot in the sky, a fuzzy, smoking dot that turned lazily and began to glide back toward the airport. It gathered speed and the dull roar of the distant engine closed over the crowd. Brady Dasher was bringing his airplane in, but it was a runaway plane, a kamikaze plane, and it could not be stopped.

  “Oh, dear God,” Floyd yelled into his microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen…”

  Dover was hypnotized by the diving airplane. He stood fearless. He seemed as though he belonged to the airplane, and the airplane belonged to him, each an extension of the other and each secretly thrilled by the coolness of the space that separated them.

  The sound reached us first, a booming, shrieking sound, echoing and re-echoing, crushing our nerves with its awesome weight, and then Brady’s Piper Cub swept down over us, curled right and followed the runway, its right wing hanging ten feet above the ground. The plane swayed and righted itself, gained altitude, folded over into a gentle loop, and then the engine hissed and stopped. We could hear the wind lapping against the silent airplane as it came out of its loop at the end of the runway. Brady Dasher was gliding his Piper Cub to a landing, sliding in under the disappearing echoes of the sound explosion that left us frightened and defenseless. The wheels of his plane touched the red-clay runway and two funnels of dust were skimmed off the top of the ground, and the plane stopped dead center of the crowd.

  “He did it! He did it! Ladies and gentlemen, Brady Dasher has cheated death again,” Floyd shouted, and the crowd went wild, shouting and whistling and applauding. Harold was in front of the fence, leading cheers and blowing kisses to heaven. Aubrey Hill was laughing so hard, tears streaked his face.

  Brady Dasher escaped death three other times that day, and each challenge was more spectacular than the one preceding it.

  He climbed out on the struts of his plane and waved to the crowd as his four-year-old son performed graceful turns above the airfield. (Aubrey Hill later told us that Brady was actually flying the Piper Cub by manipulating wires attached to the elevators and rudder.) Brady’s landing on the World’s Smallest Runway was perfect, as his Piper Cub and the 1947 Ford, driven by Harold, hit exact speeds and Harold carried the plane to a gentle stop. A parachute jumper flirted with death by refusing to pull his ripcord when Floyd assured us that a split-second delay would be disastrous. Floyd Alewine was more dramatic than John Barrymore with his description of the parachute jumper, and he had people screaming, “Pull it! Pull it! Pull it!” before the parachute streamed open, saving the miserable fool who had seriously misjudged his closing distance to the ground.

  *

  “Yessir, boys, there’s nothin’ on earth as good as a roasted hot dog,” Dover declared, sloshing ketchup on the charred, lumpy hot dog bedded like a black stick in its bun. “One time I had me some French food in a New Orleans hotel and
it was hog slop next to a roasted hot dog.” He gouged relish out of a jar with his fingers and sprinkled it across the ketchup.

  Dover was not an authority on foods, but he knew how to appreciate the spirit of an occasion and the hot dog roast at Wind’s Mill was a splendid way to close a day of marveling at airplanes performing reckless, childish games in the skies. The hot dog roast made a special day a lingering day, and we celebrated each thrill again and again, easing into absurd exaggerations by the mutual consent that seemed always to begin, “Yeah, that’s right…” By the time we had finished two dozen hot dogs, four bags of potato chips, the leftovers of Dover’s cabbage slaw, and two cartons of Dr. Peppers, Paul and Otis had decided to join the Air Force and Dover was determined to take private flying lessons as soon as he made his promotion to lineman for the REA.

  Night calmed our bragging and our exuberance, and night drove its soft darkness between us, separating our bodies and leaving warm, orange faces sitting in a circle around the fire. It was the feeling I liked most about roasting hot dogs at Wind’s Mill. I knew the rhythm of language, the long, lazy lapses between Yeahs and the occasional quiet laugh, and I knew that Dover or Freeman would soon tell again the ghostly history of Wind’s Mill, and their telling would be orchestrated by a gurgling swirl hole below the shoals in Beaverjam Creek, and by deep-voiced frogs, and by katydids and owls and whippoorwills.

  Wind’s Mill had been a gristmill even before the Civil War. Its great paddle wheel was pushed by water that had been diverted from Beaverjam Creek and forced into a narrow race made of oak planking. The wheel had rolled over and over for more than a hundred years before farmers stopped bringing their corn and grain to be mashed to pulp under the heavy stone. The water was no longer diverted and the race had filled with trash. The great paddle wheel was stilled. Some of the paddles were splintered and cracked, but Wind’s Mill was a monument and the level, clean grounds with outcroppings of flat, gray surface granite had become a favorite picnic spot of everyone in five communities.

  It was true, too, that Wind’s Mill was more than a picnic spot. There were the stories, and as time changed whatever truth had existed, the stories became wonderfully romantic—grand speculations of legendary proportions.