The Floatplane Notebooks (23 page)

“Let's eat,” said Esther.

I got to the graveyard while everybody was eating. Papa told me that after the picnic we'd load up the floatplane and take it to the lake for a water run. He's had it ready for a month, but wanted to wait until Uncle Hawk was up, but Uncle Hawk couldn't come because of complications from his cataract operation. Papa says we can put Meredith in the plane and zip him around. I said sure.

We got back and loaded it out of the shop where it's been sitting in there on two tables like a red kite-bird-doghouse with two yellow wood propellers stuck on these two new aluminum engines which you still have to start in this modern day and age with, believe it or not, a lawnmower crank rope.

It ended up the ones going were me, Papa, Meredith, Bliss, Noralee, and Taylor. Taylor's finally got to be a pretty able-bodied little man.

We lifted the floatplane up off the tables, its wings folded back, and toted it around chairs, little ladders, saw, drill, hammers,
pliers, and all that crap—out of the shop and set it down on the boat trailer which Papa has re-modified so the floatplane fits better. (One time a folded-back wing come loose while he was pulling it behind the truck, swung forward, and locked in the forward position, and the whole thing almost took off—the best luck he's had getting it in the air. I told him he ought to be flying it off the trailer instead of off the lake.) Then we snapped the trailer tow-wire on at the nose and strapped a long strap across it. Noralee and Taylor just painted her with a new coat of red paint and wrote on the side for her name:
Natural Suspension.
That was Meredith's idea. He typed it out on his typewriter. He couldn't say it. He still can't say much.

The way the floatplane is set up now is it's got a pontoon out from each side of the fuselage to keep it from sinking so deep, and the wingtips have little boats hung below them in case they dip in the water.

Me, Papa, and Bliss rode together in the truck cab, pulling the floatplane, and Noralee, Taylor, and Meredith rode in the truck bed.

We pulled through the upper parking lot at the lake and drove on down to the lower parking lot, which is next to the boat ramp.

When we stopped next to the boat ramp, people started gathering around to stare. Papa tells me to spread the wings. The reason he does that is so people will know what it is. He starts getting in his waders, which he don't need because of how warm it is. But he always wears them no matter what, so he can walk around in the water beside the floatplane and not get wet. While he's sitting in the front seat of the truck
getting his waders on, some guy walks up and asks him if he's going to fly it, and Papa says, “She flies whenever she takes a notion.” Then he says to me, “Go pay the ramp fee. We'll get Meredith out.”

When I come out of the dock house and start back toward the ramp, they've unhooked the boat trailer, rolled Meredith down out of the truck bed on his two special planks, and parked him beside the truck—driver's side—on the ramp, facing uphill.

Papa is pulling the boat trailer and floatplane back up to the truck and Taylor is in the truck getting out the life preservers. Bliss and Noralee are walking toward the dock.

I'm walking along toward them, and all of a sudden Meredith starts quietly rolling backwards—his brakes popped loose, I guess—right down the ramp, and nobody sees him but me. Or hears him—we keep them wheels well oiled.

I start running and hollering. Meredith sort of looks over his shoulder in the direction he's headed, as he rolls on past the floatplane, gaining speed right on down into the water, sending out little waves, and keeps right on rolling deeper and deeper—strapped into that wheelchair.

Everybody looks at me—I'm hollering and pointing and starting to run—and then at Meredith. Bliss and Noralee start running toward him. Meredith is rolling deeper and deeper into the water, with water up around his knees and then waist and then shoulders. Papa gets the boat trailer back on the hitch so the floatplane won't roll in on top of Meredith, I guess. Meredith reaches sand or something at the end of the boat ramp, because he stops, with his chin in the water—a single, solitary head on the water.

We all splash in the water after him.

“Get behind him,” says Papa, as he turns and starts
back
toward the floatplane for some reason. We got to Meredith—he looked scared and was breathing fast. We started rolling him out. Here comes Papa with the
tow-wire
from the boat trailer. He was planning to hook it to the front of the wheelchair, I guess, but the wire was too short. He stood there holding the hook while we rolled Meredith past him and on up onto the ramp.

“Did you bring a bathing suit and towel, Thatcher?” Papa asks.

“Yessir.” I decided not to say nothing about him standing there holding that tow-wire.

“Roll him over to the bathhouse, put on your bathing suit, take them wet clothes off him, dry him up, and dress him in your clothes.”

“But, Papa, I—”

“Now! Me and Bliss'll get this thing in the water. Go ahead.”

In a few minutes, I rolled Meredith back, all dressed in my dry clothes.

“Let's get him in there,” said Papa to nobody in general, pointing to the floatplane, “for a little ride on the water. Go get them football helmets out of the truck, Thatcher.”

 

“…
and I wish I could say or even think what it was like to fly in the floatplane for the first time,” said Meredith. “There wasn't a thing over my head but the sky. I could look down over the edge, which was right there at my elbow. The wind was cool and the sun hot at the same time.

“Papa seemed like he knew what he was doing. He was so happy he was red
—
with a smile on his face that he didn't have any control over. He was scared in his eyes, until he got the hang of it.

“We were just going for a little ride on the water and that thing started flying
—
lifted right up, clean and smooth away from the water. We flew out over town, over the house, and then looked down at the graveyard, here.

“Papa flew it back to the lake and made a big, wide turn, dropping down lower and lower, straightened her out and touched down into the wind. Bliss said just perfect, like a swan.”

Published by
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
in association with
Taylor Publishing Company
1550 West Mockingbird Lane
Dallas, Texas 75235
© 1988 by Clyde Edgerton. All rights reserved.

“Breathe on Me,” words, Edwin Hatch, 1878;
adapted, B. B. McKinney, 1937.
Tune
TRUETT
, B. B. McKinney 1937.
Copyright 1937, 1965. Broadman Press.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“I'll Fly Away,” copyright 1932, 1960.
Albert E. Brumley and Sons.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Parts of this book appeared in slightly different form in
Just Pulp
,
The Leader
, and
The Lyricist.

A floatplane's appearance in this book is due in great part to the author's sighting of a real floatplane in 1980. That aircraft was designed, built, and flown by Tom Purcell of Raleigh, North Carolina.

Design by Molly Renda
Title page illustration by Steven Cragg

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE FOR A PREVIOUS EDITION OF THIS WORK.

eISBN
9781616202149