The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga) (14 page)

Jack wasn’t all that surprised; she’d just confirmed his own conviction that Pete still loved his mother, and he was certain that she felt the same way about him. While she attempted to avoid showing it, her grief over Pete’s apparent death seemed to be a good deal more than what she’d shown over his grandfather. He had no conception of how, or if, his mother and Pete might get together in the future, but it sure as hell didn’t simplify the problem at hand. He and Pete needed to talk about Linda, and soon. After what he’d heard from Gene Debs about the rigors of Preflight, he wanted to be rid of as many distractions as possible before that ordeal began.

Other important, if less crucial, decisions had to be made. Dealing with Linda, the closing of the HCBC sale, his draft notice and the Navy had put the decision of what to do about his Bisque property on the back burner. He hadn’t put the house on the market, although no fewer than three of his former Bisque High classmates had prevailed on him to list it with them. Gene Debs would take care of things there for the near term, but there was no getting around the fact that he’d need to go back before reporting in at
Pensacola. The well-worn Buick wagon was company property, and had been handed over to Ralph Williams when he dropped them off at the boatyard, so buying a car was near the top of his to-do list. Hell, he thought, maybe I should buy two; get Linda some wheels. She’ll need transportation of her own while she and Pete are sparring around, and with luck she won’t drive it off the end of some pier. I’d better go get a cup of coffee and feel my way out onto the beach, because thinking about her reckless nature’s gettin’ my dick hard…

A hard red golf-ball sun had made it three or four fingers above the horizon when he heard footsteps, too heavy for Linda’s, crunching dead sea oat stalks behind him. Tilting his head as far back has he could, he looked up through the forest of hairs on the back of Pete’s fingers, and felt the pressure of their tips on his forehead. “Mornin’, Bird,” said the voice from on high.

“Mornin’, Buzz.” they had, somewhere along the line, contracted these names for each other from their earlier extended forms, Shitbird and Shitbuzzard.

“Been up long?”

“‘Bout an hour.”

“Skipper’s still sawin’ Z’s,” Pete said as he sat down beside Jack, reaching back with his left hand to steady his descent, the fingers of his right hooked through the handles of the coffee pot and a crockery mug that matched Jack’s.

“Still gettin’ over the trip, I guess,” Jack responded, holding out his mug for a refill. “The burden of command, y’know. That’s some trip, I’ll tell you that.”

“Surprised you guys didn’t freeze your asses off. I never did figure out whose idea it was.”

Jack shot him a tight grin. “You know damn well it was hers, but it didn’t take much to talk me into it.”

“‘Ignorance is bliss,’ huh?” Pete said with a chuckle.

“And how. I’m glad we did it, though; before she showed me the charts, if you’d told me that you could get a boat that size that close to Bisque, I’d never’ve believed it.”

“Well, it’s good to have you back, buddy. How’re all the Bisqueants?” The appellation, the punch line of an old private joke, rhymed with ‘miscreants.’

“Just about what you’d imagine; everybody misses you; some, like Lee Webster, more than others. The rest seem to be chasing their tails in the same tight circle as when you left.”

“Good ol’ Lee; I miss his sorry ass, too. Where’dya run into him, Ribeye’s?

“The cafe. Only got to Ribeye’s once, around 11 one night, when Cordelia put a gun to my head. Then she put the gun to Ribeye’s head and made ’im stay open for another hour.”

Pete’s raised eyebrows accompanied a brief smile that bordered on a grimace. “Guess there was no way around y’all’s gettin’ involved with her. Was anybody killed?”

“No,” Jack laughed, “Just a couple of scuffles and another cuckolding or two. “Turns out she and Linda got on quite well together.”

“I don’t think I’m quite ready to hear about that. Besides, I’ve got a little surprise for you.”

“What’s that?”

“It has to be seen to be believed,” Pete chuckled. “C’mon, let’s go hold reveille on th’ Skipper.”

As they roared along in the cool comfort of the old Buick limo’s two new air conditioning units, Jack confirmed yesterday’s impression that Pete was really enjoying driving the old warhorse. He’d first ridden it into Bisque thirteen years ago, right after what everybody around there still called “de waw,” relinquishing it to the Buick dealer in favor of a new Roadmaster wagon, the first in a series that would haul him around Bisque for a decade. It was then driven for years by the remarkable Bishop twins, White Whale to his Ahab, a perpetual and irritating reminder of his turbulent life before Bisque. When they left town for college, it returned to the hands of the Buick dealer, from whom Jack bought it. After a from-the-frame-up restoration that had taken over a year, Jack awaited the call that he knew would come, drove it to
Miami
and returned it to Pete. A bit of a gamble, but he bet on the car’s striking blue color, the urge of its heavily-modified engine, the icy cool of its interior, and, most of all, on Pete’s appreciation of all things ironic. Basking in his own prescience, he banished his earlier misgivings and gave himself up to the gemütlichkeit of the moment. Looking for a long instant at Pete’s profile, he catalogued the differences between then and now. More, grayer, hair, less nose, deep tan, pencil-line moustache and the Cuban-born penchant for guayaberas, the loose-fitting, open-weave white shirts cut to be worn with the tail out. Customarily long-sleeved, Pete wore them short-sleeved; whether he’d found a place that sold them that way or had someone cut them, Jack had yet to ask. But the profile included a familiar element; the massive right arm, fully extended in his characteristic one-handed driving style.

A few minutes’ drive north brought them to US 41; turning left, Pete gave the big straight-8 its head. The speedometer was flirting with triple digits when the saw-toothed skyline of hangars up ahead on the left tipped off his passengers to the nature of his surprise. “This oughta be good,” said Linda, prompting a broad smile of implied agreement from the burly chauffeur, who drove, as expected, through the field’s entrance, past a sign that identified it as
Tamiami
Airport. The staccato boom of the big car’s exhaust bounced off the sheet metal sides of hangars and outbuildings, rivaling the noise of a taxiing bomber as it threaded between them. He braked to a stop in the shadow of a towering blue and gray rhinoceros of an airplane, crouched expectantly on its fat main landing gear and comparatively dainty dual nose wheels, wing pontoons as long as a man reaching down in quest of non-existent water. Foot-high white block letters aft of its portside cargo door proclaimed NAVY. “What’s this?” she asked, her voice a mix of awe and anticipation.

“She’s a Grumman UF-1T,” Pete said with quiet satisfaction. “Amphibian; Wright R-1820 Cyclone engines, two each, top speed around 230, cruise 150. Designed for three crew and eight passengers. And I almost know how to fly it.”

“To say nothing of the fact,” said Jack, shooting him a grin across the top of the Buick, “That you definitely knew how to buy it. Right?”

“Can’t fool you for a minute. Last one aboard’s Mao Tse-tung!”

The introduction to this Albatross, as Grumman dubbed the last in its line of sturdy amphibians that had its roots in the ’20s, would, in typical Pete Weller fashion, be a thorough one. “She’s a honey, ain’t she?” he said, slapping bunk beds, passenger seat backs and various bulkheads as he passed by them, stepping spryly through a watertight door worthy of a combat ship, leading Linda and Jack to the cockpit. “Ol’ Sy’ll be here pretty soon, and we’ll get ’er airborne.” He stood aside to let them squeeze past. “Slide in there and get the feel of her.”

“This thing’s huge,” Linda said from the pilot’s seat, her eyes oscillating rapidly from instrument gauges to flight controls.

“She’s pretty good-sized, all right,” Pete acknowledged. “About the same as a DC-3. We’re gonna have some fun with this rascal.”

Jack smiled to himself as he looked out the co-pilot’s window at the number 2 nacelle. “Another Grumman. Same engine as the F3F?”

“Sure is; little different version, more horsepower, but definitely the old reliable R-1820 Wright Cyclone . Sump’m else it has in common with Gooney Birds.”

“Who’s ‘Ol’ Sy,’ anyway?” Linda asked. “The guy you bought it from?”

“Nope. He flew it for the guy I bought it from. Name’s actually Wilbur.
Old
Coast
Guard hand; got close to four thousand hours in these things. Said to call him Sy, so that’s what I call ’im. He’s part of the deal; a hundred hours of him, that is. Says he can probably check me out in fifty, now that we’ve been out a few times, but I don’t plan to plow through the water in this baby until I know exactly what I’m doing. Couldn’t very well check you guys out without having a damn good handle on ’er.”

They’d just stepped back onto the ramp as the strangled whine of an overworked six-cylinder engine pulled their eyes toward the nearest hangar. A boxy, faded-yellow Dodge van was approaching the aircraft at a high rate of speed. “Here’s ol’ Sy now,” Pete exclaimed. The truck ground to halt underneath the tail; a short, spare individual, snow-white pompadour a shocking contrast to his mahogany tan, stepped out. Wilbur Szymanski returned Pete’s wave, smiling broadly as he approached them.

“Mornin’, Pete,” he said as they shook hands. “You pitchin’ customers already?”

“Naah, just scroungin’ up a crew. Mind puttin’ a couple of observers on the manifest? I’ll be checking ’em both out in this ol’ bird as soon as I’m legal.”

“I can stand it if they can.” glancing at Jack, and scrutinizing Linda, he said, “You guys multi-engine rated?”

“Nope,” Pete interjected. “That, however, will be our main objective once I’m type-rated.”

“Well, hell, then, what’re we waitin’ for?”

The Albatross’s preflight check began with Pete’s climbing a ladder to the top of the battered yellow truck, which Sy called “the pie wagon,” and inspecting the aircraft’s exterior, its control surfaces in particular, as Sy positioned the truck in a succession of spots around its periphery. Around twenty minutes later, he led them back to the cockpit, or “flight deck” in Sy-speak. Pete slid into the left seat, Sy into the right. “Y’all can ease right in there for takeoff,” he said, indicating the flight engineer’s and radioman’s seats behind the pilots’ that could be swiveled to face instrument-laden panels set against the ship’s skin.

Pete and Sy went through the preflight checklist, and, having apparently summoned someone by radio to stand by the fire bottle, started the engines, first number 2 and then the number 1. After the requisite pops and belches, the engines settled down to their customary roar, which, all windows and hatches in the cockpit being open, filled the Albatross’s interior.

The tower cleared them for taxi to the runup area as the pilots continued with the checklist enroute. Runup complete, Pete released the brakes and taxied to the end of Runway 14, Sy’s left hand reaching up to advance the throttles to takeoff power as the aircraft lined up with the center stripe. The Albatross moved ponderously ahead, engines roaring, and after a protracted roll Pete rotated the nose and coaxed her into the air, wrestling the yoke hard left in a crosswind correction. Once clear of the runway, he pushed the nose over, leveling at a hundred feet or so to gain airspeed. He resumed climbing a few seconds later; Jack loosened his seatbelt enough to crane his neck over Pete’s shoulder and check the indicated airspeed, which sat at a tick over 100. Since he had no idea what Sy had in mind by way of a flight plan, he settled back in the seat to await an OK from the cockpit to unstrap and get a better look at what was going on.

The OK came quickly; Pete leveled the aircraft at 2,000 feet, banking gently left as he waggled a finger at them to come forward. They stood jammed together in the narrow aisle, half their bodies still behind their respective pilots’ seats, as Pete rolled out on a heading of 130. The flatness of
South Miami
slid steadily below them, a wide conveyor belt of pale gray roofs, pastel cars and a scattering of shimmery aquamarine swimming pools. “I thought y’all’d enjoy a little sightseeing before the work starts,” Pete said as he continued to scan both the surrounding airspace and the instrument panel. “We’ll be passing over the house in just a minute, then a quick run out to Bimini and back here to Dinner Key, the old Pan American Clipper seadrome. Sy’s gonna show me how to put this thing down on the water today.”

“You sure this thing doesn’t leak?” Linda asked, drawing laughter from both student and instructor.

“Just a little here and there,” Sy replied over his shoulder. “But the bilge pump’ll handle it.”

They were over the open ocean in minutes, boat traffic dwindling as the water turned an ever-deeper blue. “Mind if these guys get a little left seat time, Sy?”

“Not a bit,” Sy said as he readjusted the fuel mixture. “Who’s first?”

Bimini behind them, passengers and crew at their landing stations, Pete requested clearance for “splash-and-goes” from the Coast Guard air controller as they approached the waters of Dinner Key from south-southeast. “You’re cleared to enter the pattern, 3312; no other traffic at this time. Wind 095 at 8; advise splashdown.”