He began to grow tomatoes, which was totally out of character for him, but it was a newfound joy, he proclaimed. And the writing continued feverishly. But even as his mother moved in to care for him, he sank lower, and finally, with another collapsed lung and spinal meningitis he entered the intensive care unit, never to leave. Eventually, the beeps and squiggly lines on the oscilloscopes went steady and the sun finally went down on Dave's dreams.
In the end it wasn't a mid-air collision, an enemy missile, a failed engine, or a test flight gone bad that got him, as he had prophesied. It was AIDS. I knew it had to be. Gene and I compared notes. We had had the same suppositions all along. I wondered if he might have told me that last time we were togetherthe day we met for lunchhad the stranger not been there.
His manuscript, "Red Star Express," was good. I could clearly see him in his characters. But it fell victim to the collapse of communism and went unpublished. He would have been a fine author.
But my most vivid memory of Dave was the way he was always asking those tough questions about lifethe ones that most people stuff into the closets of their souls, not willing to confront. He had a quest for the Truth, with a capital T, as he expressed it. Yet he knew the Truth.
I slip the microspeakers of my Walkman under my headset and listen to some Moody Blues. Dave loved to listen to their distinct harmonics and exuberant lyrics while he flew his Yankee.
"MAC Victor 6522, Jeddah, contact Cairo now, on frequency 134.6."
Their music seemed intended for fliers.
I know he's out there somewheresomewhere in the sunset.
"MAC Victor 6522, Jeddah Control, I say again, I say again, call Cairo on 134.6, do you read? Over!"
I really miss him.
Eight.
The Probable Cause
I'm plowing through the tail of the Storm, seated across the cockpit from the only black man I've ever come to know well. He's talking of his upbringing in the poverty-infested Delta. Its not a delta in the geologic sense but is actually a large triangular-shaped region characterized by the low, flat, fertile floodplains of the lower Mississippi River. Hope is a sparse commodity for a black kid growing up in the Delta. Where once picking cotton was the only viable way of life, now aspirations are focused on the catfish processing plants, where the wages are often bad. But at least it's out of the sun, and it's steady work, as long as the city dwellers in Jackson, Memphis, and New Orleans don't lose their taste for the ugly, bewhiskered, pond-raised but damned succulent little devils.
Brady Tonth set his sights higher than the fish factories. He was descended from a tarnished history of bondage and hate-mongering that most prudent Mississippians find at least disconcerting, if not repulsive. But fueled by a great resolve to succeed, Brady emerged from the poverty trap, earned an education, the silver wings of an Air Force pilot, and later the four stripes of an airline captain. The six-figure salary was a nice fringe benefit.
Those first months were terribly apprehensive and uncertain. He was the Mississippi Air Guard's first black pilot. He met with no rudeness or overt expressions of prejudice, but the attitudes were there; he could feel them. He occasionally overheard racial jokes and detected subtle condescension. Still, he avoided confrontation and instead revealed his exuberant personality. Yet he didn't know for sure whether he was making any progress bucking the headwind of prejudice, especially among certain of the enlisted contingent who often flirted with the boundaries of insubordination in their relationship with him. But one night at the all-ranks club he found out.
The entire squadron was at the Gulfport Training Center for our drill weekend. A lavish boiled shrimp feed had just concluded, and many of the crewdogs migrated into the club and began to mingle with the local crowd. The big room was crowded and loud with country music. Although he was one of the few men of color there, he was enjoying himself immenselyso much so that he invited a local white girl to dance while her male escorts were away I had remained on the patio with the more sedate of my squadron-mates, but I heard the skirmish when it began.
The two men, both burly and intimidating, had returned and had found the girl on the dance floor with the festive Brady. The spectacle must have affronted whatever puny values they harbored, for they wasted no time in clearing the dance floor, then commenced to teach Brady a lesson or two. Brady thought that maybe he had overstepped and now was about to pay dearly. But no sooner had the brutes seized him than Robert Evans and Mad Dog Mashaw, our two scrappiest loadmasters, dove into the fray, followed quickly by a host of crewdogs, driving the thugs away Then Brady knew that he was indeed among friends. They might be yet a little crude and a bit insensitive, but he belonged. It meant much to him.
Still, he never forgot those of his brothers and sisters who remained trapped in despair. He tells me how they need to know that they can break out, as he did, that all they need is encouragement and a good role model. He tells me about his efforts to instill hope in the forlorn faces of the black youth around Vicksburg. He talks to them on the street corners and addresses them in schools and churches. He has a splendid gift of gab; he smoothly engages total strangers in conversation as if he'd known them all his life. He tickles me the way he talks of serious subjects of the heart and head and then, deciding the conversation has become too weighty, without pause switches to unmitigated bullshit.
We have had many such freewheeling discussionsfrom brain to bullin the cockpit during the long cruises and in the quarters and eateries of a half-dozen air bases. I had tried to explain the paradoxical pride I felt for my southern heritage. I told him about my great-grandfather, who had had little or no formal education but had nevertheless expressed himself well with the pen and had written of the pride for the "cause" for which he had fought the Yankees. Yet he was only a dirt farmerdidn't own anyone. There must have been more to the Cause than I can account for.
I wanted Brady to understand what I couldn't comprehend myself, how I could identify so closely with such a long lost thing. The harder I reasoned, the more disdainful the Cause became, yet the more I realized that I belong to it. It must be that the Cause with which I identify bears little resemblance to that which motivated so many in 1861. Or maybe, even in those troubled times, the Cause had many and varied meanings.
I don't know, maybe the Cause is simply that which drives me to express my threatened individuality, to preserve and protect my freedom, to persevere in the face of overwhelming odds, like that inspirational feeling a Southerner has when he or she is the underdog. Maybe we just like being underdogs. When I see that impassioned flag with its crossed bars and blue stars, I don't see hatred and bigotry, though I see them in the faces of the wretched people who use the flag to justify them. Rather, I see courage and honor. I see it the way my great-granddaddy saw it.
Brady accepted and tried to understand my feelings. But he explained, with deep sincerity and logic with which I had to agree, the feelings of his culture. We didn't agree on everything, but we were able to talk about such things without confrontation, with open mindsa characteristic, I believe of maturity, the Christian values to which we both subscribed, and of true friendship.
Brady has a way of characterizing bigotry with humor. He related a story from his days in UPT. Nearing graduation he was scheduled for the big event, the T-38 solo out and back. He had about thirty hours' solo time the day his instructor released him to fly the "White Rocket" alone to Craig Air Force Base in Selma, Alabama.