The Floatplane Notebooks (17 page)

Thatcher rubbed his hand across the top of his head and looked around. “Well, at least he ain't dead. Let's go.”

Taylor was in the backyard. I called Sylvia, my neighbor, and asked her to keep him. She said fine. We dropped him off. I didn't want him to see all of us so upset. And Meredith has been sending him presents from all over.

Mr. Copeland met us on the porch and we walked into the living room together. Mildred was sitting on the couch. Rhonda and Noralee were sitting in chairs. We walked in and Mr. Copeland stood at the door like he was waiting for somebody else. Noralee was holding the green pillow she always holds when she talks to her boyfriend on the phone. Her eyes were red. Everybody's eyes were red.

“It's right here,” said Rhonda. She stood, picked up the telegram off the coffee table and handed it to me. Then she turned her pregnant self around and walked to the window and looked out.

It was the first telegram I'd ever seen, except in the movies. It said: “Staff Sergeant Meredith Copeland has been wounded in service of his country. Condition very serious but stable. Letter or phone call to follow.” It had extra numbers and dates and so forth and you couldn't tell who had sent it. It was said in such a way—like a menu or church bulletin—that made me hate the paper it was on, and whoever had written it, and the Marines, and Vietnam. Meredith had been saying in his letters that one dumb man writes everything for the
Marines. I had him pictured in my head at a desk, and I felt like he had written this. It made me hate how Meredith could somehow be sucked over there, how some kind of vacuum could suck him over there to that place to have his body torn into no telling what kind of condition. Meredith.

“Maybe Mark could find out something,” I said. “Miss Esther's got that phone number. She can call Mark overseas, and then maybe he can find out something. Has anybody called her?”

“We just got it—the telegram,” said Mildred. “We haven't called anybody, except your house. And Albert went out to the shop and wrote it down in the notebook, I guess.” She had a small towel of some sort in her hands and was wringing it. She looked at Albert. “Is that what you did, Albert?”

“Yes. I'll call Esther now,” he said. He was standing by the front door, looking out, and hadn't said the first word. He went to the kitchen where the phone was and we all sat there not talking.

“Well, at least he ain't dead,” said Thatcher. “He's too hard-headed for that.”

We all looked at him. Thatcher seemed littler than I'd ever known him. I can't explain it. I couldn't believe that's all he could think of to say. I guess he was trying to make everybody feel better, but it didn't work.

“I just want to know what happened,” said Rhonda. “How bad it is and what it is.” She stood. “Y'all want something to drink?”

“I need something stiff,” I said.

“Albert's got some whiskey. Everybody want some?”

“I don't,” said Noralee.

Mr. Copeland, coming back in from the kitchen, met Rhonda in the doorway, stopped and backed up for her to take her pregnant self through. Then he came on in the living room. “She's coming over,” he said, “and bringing Mark's phone number. We'll call him, see what he can find out.”

“You can't fix no whiskey if she's coming over,” said Noralee.

“That's right,” said Mr. Copeland.

“Fix me one,” said Mildred. “This is different, for crying out loud.”

“Me, too,” said Rhonda.

“Fix me one, too,” I said. For everything there is a season.

What I thought about when I heard about it was when Meredith and I were up under the dashboard of the old DeSoto car we had and a cramp caught him in his back and he groaned like he was dying. I remembered it so clear. I was around six and he was around, let's see, fourteen, and was showing me how to hide under the dashboard and reach up and press that button which would make the gas cap pop open.

We had had that car for a while—it was old even back then—and Papa ordered the electric gas cap kit out of a book he was using to order something for the floatplane. The ignition key had to be turned on for the button to work. Meredith would sneak the key off the refrigerator and go out and press that button over and over.

Then he got this idea about making money from some of the kids in the neighborhood. They would pay him a nickel to say “Alla Kazam” while he was pointing toward the gas cap,
which would then pop open, because I'd be lying in the front floorboard up under the dash and would reach up and press the button. It was when he was showing me how to stay out of sight, and was up under the dash himself, that the cramp caught him and I thought, for a second, that he had been electrocuted in some way and I was afraid to death he was dying.

He let Mark in on the trick and they got about four boys the first day, six or eight the second, and about fifteen the third, and were making a lot of money when Aunt Esther caught them and made them give all the money back.

But on the last day Mark hadn't made much money because Meredith had told me that when he, Meredith, coughed or sniffed after Mark said “Alia Kazam” then I shouldn't press the button. Mark got pretty frustrated.

So when the news came, that's what I thought about, and I wondered if Meredith had groaned, had rolled over groaning on the ground or what. In my mind I see all the ground over there as being dirt or mud. I can't imagine green grass. Poor Meredith.

The other main thing I thought about was that Meredith was the only one who ever carried me on his shoulders. None of the others hardly ever did and he did it a bunch. And he gave me his arrowhead collection and all his broken bats that he'd gotten from the high school team and nailed up and taped. I sold the bats for fifty cents apiece, but I've still got the arrowhead collection.

When we got the news I went in my room and called Barry and cried and cried and cried. He said he'd come over, but Aunt Esther and Bliss and Thatcher were coming so I told
him to wait. Thatcher is terrible to Barry. He won't say anything to him unless it's about Canada. One of Barry's buddies went to Canada. I wish Meredith had. I swear I do.

Our barracks are in two rows, ten rooms per row, facing each other. Between them is our bar, a two-room cabin called the Nailhole. We've got a pet pig in a pen behind the Nailhole—named Napoleon. We dress him up once a week or so and let him roam around outside.

I'm walking between the barracks toward the Nailhole. It's dark, except for outside building lights. The phone beside the latrine door, next to my room, rings. A Thai boy is sitting beneath it, polishing boots. He stands, answers it. I keep walking toward the Nailhole. He lets the phone hang at the end of the cord and starts toward my room, sees me, points to the phone.

It's Mother. There's a lot of static. They got a telegram. Meredith has been wounded, seriously. Can I see what I can find out. They're real worried. I'm to call them right back if I can.

My mind jumps all around every which way. My arms start tingling and my lips feel numb.

Meredith. Wounded. Maybe it's not too bad. I call the base operator. “I need to get Da Nang. The base hospital.”

I get them. “This is Lieutenant Mark, ah, Copeland at Nakhom Phanom.” I'll lie. “My brother, Meredith Copeland, is there, wounded. Can you give me the name of his doctor?”

I am transferred several times and I finally get Meredith's doctor on the phone. “This is Lieutenant Mark Copeland at Nakhom Phanom. I need to find out about my brother, Meredith Copeland, who got wounded in the last day or two. I'm his brother.”

I listen. He finds the file and explains that Meredith was wounded by a mine, has a head injury, and that they had to… oh Lord, amputate his left
arm and leg.
He asks for my number. He'll call back in a day or two if there's any change. I hang up and look at the phone. I feel sick. I think back to the last time I talked to Meredith. He had called to tell me Rhonda was pregnant.

I open the door to my room. There is this curtain of black cloth—wall to wall and ceiling to floor—in the middle of the room. Behind it are two beds. Buck, my roommate, a night flyer, is out. I close the door and flip the light switch, lighting the front half of the room. An electric clock is on my desk. It is nine thirty-five. I sit in my chair and stare at the clock. The white second hand moves through the six, the seven, the eight, the nine. My arms tingle. I've got to call home and tell them. All of them are sitting there in the living room at Uncle Albert's, or standing around the phone in the kitchen, waiting for me to call. I see Meredith swinging out over the pond on the wisteria vine; beside me in the floatplane in the shop with his navy blue ball cap pulled tight on his head the way
he always wore it. I lift my arms and put them on the desk, rest my head on my arms. Meredith.

Rhonda answers. I tell her everything. No, I don't believe I want to talk to anyone else until next time. I'll call again as soon as I hear anything, but sometimes we can't get out on the phone line, and I'm really sorry about what happened, and that we'll all hope for the best. She starts crying. I look up at a floodlight, take a deep breath and think, Dear God, let him be all right and not die. We say goodbye. I hang up and walk toward the Nailhole. I'm in Uncle Albert's truck with Meredith, and he's driving across the snow on the ball field. He's skidding it all over the place. That left hand is crossing over the right one, spinning the steering wheel. His left foot is stomping the clutch pedal, and it's making that dull slam sound it always had.

I go to the wall phone in the Nailhole, find “scheduling” in the directory, call Captain Layton and explain. He says they've usually got something to be taken to Da Nang. I need to go, I say. Can he find something for me to take? He says no problem, tomorrow morning; I'll just have to check with Captain Coggins.

I go back to the bar and order a drink. Captain Whitney is talking about antiaircraft fire. “And all of a sudden an eighty-five whoofed off at about ten thou' with this great big ball of black smoke.” He puts his glass on the bar and shows the size with his hands. ‘About that big. I said, ‘Wait a fucking minute.'”

Two more pilots come in. One puts a baby duck—tan and fuzzy with brown spots—on the bar. It takes three or four steps, stops and looks around unsteadily.

I stand at the bar holding my drink. I press my palm against the cold glass.

“Whose duck?” asks Whitney.

“Ours. Bought it from a shoeshine boy—figured it'd make a good mascot. We can dress it up or something.”

“We can fuck it,” says Whitney. He grabs the duck and turns it upside down. Its legs stick up like short, thin pencils. He puts the duck's bottom in my face. “What is it, Oakley? Male or female? You were raised on a farm, weren't you?”

I back off, take a drink.

Whitney places the duck back on the bar near Davenport and Fletcher, who are playing cup dice. The duck runs five or six feet and stops. John, the bartender, pours water from a pitcher into a clean ashtray and places it in front of the duck. It turns and waddles away. Its wings flick when the dice cup hits the bar.

More pilots come in. One slaps a five-dollar bill onto the bar. “I got five dollars says Whitney won't bite the duck's head off.”

“All right!” someone yells. “Here's a five says he will.”

“You can't eat the mascot,” someone says.

“Napoleon's the mascot.”

“Eat Napoleon. He's getting big enough.”

“Taking bets here.”

John turns his back and begins washing drink glasses in soapy water.

“Bourbon and water, John.”

John wipes his hands on a towel and puts ice in a glass.

“You
bite the fucking head off the duck,” says Whitney to another pilot.

I walk outside. A dull moon is low in the sky, three-fourths full—full enough to show the man in the moon looking down, surprised, open-mouthed. It's warm and breezy. Several pilots come toward me from across the lawn.

A chant rises inside the bar. “You can do it, you can do it, you can. Eat the duck! You can do it, you can do it, you can. Eat the duck!”

Then a sudden loud roar of cheers, scattered applause.

The air-conditioning in the hospital at Da Nang is out. Nobody is under covers. My father died in a hospital like this. I wonder if it was hot, or cool, or cold. A medic is taking me to Meredith. He tells me Meredith can't talk. Can't
talk.
We enter a ward. I scan and find the one with his left leg and arm missing. He is asleep in plain green bed clothes. Bottles hang on racks. Tubes are in his nose. The medic stops and points at him. At first I don't recognize his face. I read the name on the foot of the bed to be sure: Meredith Ross Copeland, E-3, USMC. The medic leaves. Meredith's left arm and leg are only half there, stubbed, bandaged, white. His pale, almost yellow face is turned to the side, the top and left side of his head bandaged, his mouth open, lips swollen. Dark brown circles are under both eyes, his right hand drawn, drawn in toward his side—like the arm of someone who has had a stroke.

I turn and walk away so I can get my breath.

I turn back around and start toward Meredith, then stop. He can't talk. If he wakes up, I will be drawn down into his eyes. I will be turned upside down, held there and shaken and turned sideways and spun, so I turn my back on him and
walk away to make it through this myself, now. I stop and look up into a light in the ceiling, and a boy in a bed says, “He ain't going to make it, sir. Me and Danny over there already got money on it.”

I walk out of the room and into a hall. I can't remember which way to turn. I walk through an exit door into the sunshine. A wheelchair sits out there, beside a wooden bench. Nobody is around. The sunlight catches on one of the wheelchair spokes, and it glints like a tiny sustained bolt of lightning.