“Back when you graduated from college. You volunteered, and if not for Mom getting sick, you would have made general. If you went, why shouldn’t I? You always said the military, medicine, teaching, and the church were the noblest of professions. And you chose the military first.”
“But it was different then, sweetie. We weren’t at war.”
“And you and your buddies most likely talked damn near every day about proving yourselves if and when there was one.”
“You know my service record, Elizabeth. I was under fire for less than a hundred hours, miles back from the front line, never fired a shot in anger.”
“And inside, you chastised yourself for that. You can’t deny it, Dad.”
“It’s all different now, Elizabeth. You’ll be fighting for a government we don’t know, that we did not vote into power, fighting in a war we’re not even sure about. It’ll take years, maybe a generation, before we can really say things are back to normal—if ever they will be again.”
“And what the hell have I done for it?” she asked.
“You have a baby to think of.”
“Don’t you think I considered that? So, yeah, my complete contribution to all this is I got pregnant, and then my baby’s father goes out and gets himself killed. Just great—my total contribution to civilization.”
“Ben is the future,” John offered.
“I know that.” She started to choke up. “But nevertheless, you know I love him with all my heart, but I feel I have to go. Go and do something the way his father did.”
John wanted to snap, Sure, Ben’s dad was a hero—killed in a bloody butchery of a fight, and in retrospect, if given any choice, the kid would have wanted to live. And now, Elizabeth—like eighteen-year-olds throughout history—was imbued with an idealism to do her part and not questioning the deeper reasons of why.
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” John sighed.
“What does that mean?” Elizabeth asked.
John just shook his head and saw the curse that all fathers who have seen war know far too well. It was one thing for them to go, but it was something else entirely when they came for your children. He realized he was playing the guilt line on her while sitting only feet away from Jennifer’s grave. It wasn’t fair to her; what he was saying was now about him, and he felt a wave of shame for playing that card, but at the moment, he could not help it.
Sighing, he said, “I can’t stop you. I just ask that you give me a few days to figure things out.”
“Just please don’t try to pressure me, Dad,” she replied forcefully. “If that’s it, I’m going to sleep. Little Ben wore me ragged today, and I’m part of the work team for picking ramps tomorrow.”
She got up, kissing Makala and then John on the cheek. She hesitated for a second and then leaned in and hugged him so fiercely that he winced.
“Hey, the rib still hurts too.”
She hit him with the smile that could always disarm him and left the room.
“I never had children, John.” Makala sighed. “I wish I had one like her.”
“You do. She sees you as her mother now.”
“You know what I mean,” Makala whispered and then cleared her throat. “She got you with that opening argument. She’s right, and you know it.”
He could only nod his head in agreement.
“Let’s go to bed, John. You need to be fresh, for tomorrow morning’s excitement and then the meeting with Fredericks tomorrow night.”
She got up and left the room, leaving him to his nightly ritual of picking up Rabs and going out by Jennifer’s grave to say good night.
“You have one helluva sister, Jennifer, but then you always knew that,” he whispered. “But dear God, I can’t bear losing her too.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
John got out of his Edsel, the sun just breaking the horizon beyond the Swannanoa Gap, the air perfectly calm and clear, and he could not help but grin and whistle an old-fashioned wolf whistle at the beauty that was in front of him.
It was Don Barber’s old Aeronca L-3B World War II recon bird, fully restored. The plane had served as the crucial all-seeing eyes of their community in the months after the Day. With no electronics in it whatsoever, to start it, one had to pump an old-fashioned primer, with a brave soul out front grabbing hold of the propeller and throwing it to bring the engine to life. The plane had played a crucial role in first monitoring the approach of the Posse, providing recon on their attack deployment and flanking moves up Swannanoa Gap. Against strict orders, Don had tried to provide close air support during the battle by dropping pipe bombs, and he was shot down. Don was killed, and the canvas-fabric plane burned, one entire wing gone. And he had assumed, as had everyone else, that it was a write-off.
Rare indeed was the private plane that had survived the Day and the chaos afterward, but there were still more than a few old pilots alive who, like any pilot, felt only half alive if he didn’t get his hands on a plane on a regular basis. Billy Tyndall was such a pilot, and Maury Hurt, the owner of the WWII-era Jeep—though not a pilot—was a master mechanic with equipment from that war. They were joined by Danny Mullen, an airplane mechanic from the Vietnam era who had serviced B-52s, who said if you work on one plane, you just get a feel for any type of plane. They had hauled the wreckage back to an abandoned warehouse by the Ingrams’ market. They scrounged up tools, canvas, and even spruce spars from the garage of old man Quinten, who had been working on a homebuilt plane but had died from heart failure in the first weeks after the start of things.
Now, two years and a couple of thousand man-hours later, she was ready for her checkout flight. The paint job was army green, taken from Maury’s workshop, with the original touch of white and black stripes from aircraft that had flown on D-day. They towed the plane up to the interstate as their landing strip, the test postponed for several days until finally dawn revealed clear skies and no wind.
It had become a source of concern for John that word might leak beyond Black Mountain that they were rebuilding a plane, and he made sure, as best as he could, that all were sworn to secrecy as to what was going on in “hangar one.” It was something Dale had not picked up on during his visit, and John was pleased that the hangar crowd had kept their mouths shut.
The alleged secret project was now public when they towed the plane out of its hangar. Word rapidly spread that the big day was at hand, and several hundred spectators had come down to watch and definitely pray.
The team who labored so hard for this moment now stood in a tight circle, quietly arguing about the next step. Danny, Maury, and a couple of others who had flown were saying that Billy should just stick to what was called “crow hopping,” getting a few feet off the ground and then gliding back to a landing.
“It’s the way the FAA used to insist upon it being done,” someone said.
Billy sighed. “There ain’t no FAA anymore.”
There was a time when one mentioned the FAA and most pilots started to mutter under their breath, but at that moment, there were no certified inspectors to check the work, no professional pilots to take on the risky job of the first test flight. This was yet another throwback to a long, long time ago when those who wanted to reach the clouds built a plane in their barns from some basic designs in an old magazine, rolled it out, said a prayer, and took off.
“Look, either it flies or it doesn’t. And there’s only one way to find out.”
The circle around him fell silent. Danny finally extended his hand and patted Billy on the shoulder.
“Okay, but if you kill yourself, I’m going to be really pissed that you wrecked the plane again.”