A Crimson Set of Silver
Alan Meyers Starkey
Copyright 2009 by Alan Meyers Starkey
Smashwords Edition
This novel is dedicated to my mother; Jenive Marie Meyers Starkey, who left this world much too soon and certainly long before I was ready.
A cover graphic conceptual credit is due to Glenn Southwick. Cover graphics and original story concept by Alan Meyers Starkey. Editing credits are due to Donna Marie Keith.
This book is purely a work of fiction. Names, items, characters, incidents, and places are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any reference or resemblance to actual places, events, or persons, either dead or alive, is coincidental. The author may also employ some artistic licensing to add to the enjoyment of the story or when referencing other works of fiction.
Chapter One:
“I am what I am”
I’m just havin’ fun
Can’t you see?
I ain’t out, to hurt no one
But, there’s a few of ‘em out for me, yeah, yeah
I say life…goes too fast
I’m just tryin’ to make it last
And I’ll be ‘Johnny in the Morning’, just as long…
As I can be
That is one of the great songs, written by Jonathan Brandmeier, a disc jockey, who used to have a morning radio show on The Loop, in Chicago. He and his band, The Leisure Suits, would perform concerts four times a year, one for each season, and always sell them out. But that was a long, long time ago. I love that song and I’d love to know what Johnny’s doing now.
The song was still in my head as I started the approach. I was coming into the airfield at about six hundred feet above sea level, at a southwest heading about forty-five degrees from being parallel with the runway. I swung her around to the left and put her down on Runway 27.
I am a light aircraft pilot. Ultralight Driver, more specifically a Light Sport pilot, which means I can fly an airplane which has no more than two seats, and comes in under a certain weight class. I have a Beaver RX 550. It’s an odd looking plane. People always say it looks like there are parts of it missing, but that’s just the way it’s designed. Open cockpit, two seats in a tandem setup, with aluminum floats attached. Some people might refer to it as a bush plane, but this is not that stout. Fabric wings and aluminum struts. Retractable landing gear. Stick and rudder. We removed the underpowered Rotax engine and replaced it with a fuel injected four cylinder Geo car motor, adding about thirty more horsepower She climbs out nicely now, with two of us and I don’t have to mix the oil and the gas. It has a black and white, skull and cross bones pirate flag attached to the top of the horizontal stabilizer.
It’s not the type of plane that you would use to fly distances. She has an eight gallon tank, burns about three gallons an hour, and doesn’t have a fond liking to strong winds. This type of flying is more about enjoying the pleasure of flight. The early airplanes flew much the same way, and with the same type of controls. The floats make it even more fun. I can drop her down on the water just about anywhere. I could also put her down in a short field, if I needed to.
I am arrogant man, subtlety cocky, very confident, and sarcastic. Serious when I need to be, jocular when I don’t. I know what I know. What I don’t know I will ask you directly. I have the propensity to tell a funny story, or set up an example to drive my point across, when you don’t see the colors on the map the way I do. Those who don’t know me well are often rubbed the wrong way by the sarcasm. But I figure they’ll get over it. Those who do know me are often left with a smile on their faces.
I have a strong fondness for: Fine cuisine, good books, good movies, and good music, especially live, and white wine, never red. I like the dry wines and the fruity types, a variety of which I keep stored in an atmosphere controlled closet.
There is a short stanza of poetic verbiage stenciled, in very small black font, on the red area of the vertical stabilizer on my airplane. The passerby will think it is just a smudge. Those who pause long enough to read it will think it is just a cute poem. Very few are actually able to understand that in reality, it is my creed.
It reads:
I am Tom Sawyer.
I am Indiana.
I am what I am.
I am Superman.
I was born in a little town, in the farm country of south central Pennsylvania. Raised by my mother. Just me and her. Grew up in an average house, creek in the backyard, lots of woods and adjacent to a one hundred and eighty acre working farm. Lots of machinery. Tractors and combines and balers. Grain elevators and silos. Lots of things to watch and figure out how they worked. Lots of space to run and ride. There was a trail behind the house made by the old trolleys. The tracks had been removed years before, but the stones still marked the path. The tracks led back through the woods, passed an open meadow, and along the creek. One of the original trolley stops was an old amusement park from the eighteen nineties. In its heyday, it displayed rides and games, sold popcorn and cotton candy. It was the featured event activity of this area and brought in the crowds from everywhere the trolley went. But the park had been abandoned long ago, though the circular carousel still remained in working condition. A beautiful, hand carved merry go round. Not just horses, it had lions and tigers, sheep and giraffes and a large dragon. We would go in there and ride it, playing tag while it ran at high speed. The gearing and cogging was all made of wood, and needed constant attention. Someone told me they took it out and put it in the Smithsonian.
I was a pretty good high school athlete. Could’ve been better, had the girls and the parties not got in the way. Girls and parties cost money, so I had to go to work after school. The Marines came next. Later, after my discharge, I got started in the maintenance field in a stone quarry.
My name is Jake Snow. I stand just over six feet. Tip the scales at just under two hundred. Try to keep it lean and steady. The size must have come from my father because my mother was maybe five feet two. I try to keep in shape. Although, the pouch above my belt does have the tendency to bulge if I don’t stay on top it. I have medium gray eyes. My mother once told me they are the color of the fog on the windows on a rainy day. A pearl pale shade of gray. I know that I am not an ugly man. The square jaw starts at the bottom of the ear lobe. A thin nose scarred by the slip of the pliers cutting wire, long ago. You can only really gauge your attractiveness by the looks you get or the comments you receive from the passing stranger. I seem to get mixed reviews. Once, I had a very frank conversation with a good friend about our sincere, truthful perceptions of each other. His remarks were surprising, and “although I’ve searched myself, there’s always someone else I see.”
I do the morning run thing, and I have a twenty minute high repetition, low weight, workout plan. I do it whenever I can. My brown hair is parted down the middle and tapers toward the back, though it is not a mullet. The sides are cropped over the ears and also combed back. It falls down in the back to below the collars of the shirts I wear.
In the time when all the dot-com companies starting erupting on the internet, I was doing side work on weekends making extra money. One of these companies discovered that there was a massive interest in the what-cha-ma-call-it they designed. They needed a mechanized system to assemble the parts, process the orders, and move them through the packaging process to the point where it could be sorted and shipped to customer locations. They got in contact with the industry types, and I heard about it during a conversation with my friend, Johnny Miller. He did some networking and promoted my name, and I was invited to submit a bid proposal. I won the bid.
Johnny, who is always eager to be involved with my projects, jumped on board to support the project financially. All in and all done, we both made out very well. Well enough for Johnny to pay off his three story, log cabin mansion, on top of the hill, in the middle of an orange grove, in a small community called Howey-in-the-Hills. Well enough for me to grab up a nice stretch of lake front property, just before the Florida real estate boom took off.
Within a year, the real estate market just got completely stupid in Florida. Stupid, if you were a buyer. A lottery game if you were a seller.
I was a seller, and the developers wanted my land. Apparently, two separate housing construction companies had acquired large tracts of land in the vicinity, with an agreement for access rights to bring a road through to the lake. The agreement for access rights fell through. That left them scrambling for the only other access to the lake. Right, smack dab, through the middle of my nice stretch of lake front property. I made out quite nicely, and turned the whole thing around to essentially pay cash for the place where I now call home. Because the luck landed right in my lap, I renamed the ranch The Fortuitous Landing.
I live in Lake County, Florida, not too far away from Johnny’s orange grove. It is a ranch style house, which has been modified with false walls and hidden spaces, to give me enough security and piece of mind, that the few valuables I possess won’t easily been found by a break-in artist. The house sits mid way back the length of the property, and off to the right side far enough, to still give me enough width to bring my plane in on a grass landing strip. The long lane leads from the road up passed the house and to the barn. The barn sits back off to the side of the house, and serves as my hanger and fabrication shop. The previous owner utilized the land and the barn for horse training, breeding and lessons. I paid the Utility Companies to stop the overhead power at the nearest posts and run it underground, where it crosses my land on the street, so I won’t have to worry about catching the wires when I bring the plane in.
The Fortuitous Landing is nineteen acres of pasture land, which lays out in a large rectangle with a dog-leg to the right. The airstrip runs east and west. The dog-leg serves as an alternative, if a cross wind is too strong to bring the plane in on the airstrip. I would like to dig in a long pond there someday.
The spin off business from the dot-com company produced more business and I am able to pick and choose jobs. I do the ones that are attractive and farm out the ones that aren’t. It also gives me the ability to keep the schedule light when I want, and heavier when I need it to be. This gives me lots of time to fly.
Chapter Two:
“Absolutely no question in my mind. I have seen that picture a hundred times from above.”
Tuesday evening. After filling the fuel tank, I pushed the Beaver out of the hanger and went through the preflight inspection. Satisfied, I went back in the hanger and grabbed the radio, both headsets, and the GPS. I use one of the little portable types, which gives you a pointer, and the distance in miles from your destination. When I’m just flying around locally, I leave it set on my home waypoint. Just a glance will let me know where I am in relation to home, and how far out I am. I don’t need the maps included on those expensive units. They’re just toys and games to me. Danny Knight will tell you that you shouldn’t need anything, unless you are flying over unfamiliar terrain, like a cross country trip. Danny doesn’t realize that some of us can get disoriented, and without the GPS, we’d have to climb high to be able to spot a reference point on the ground. Danny has more flying time locally than anyone. More time than any of us will ever have.
Ready now, I set the throttle, primed the carburetors and flipped on the switch. Put my butt in the front seat and fastened the belts. Turned the radio on, and pressed the starter button. The Geo cranked over and kicked in. There is always a swash noise while the prop gets up to speed. Okay with the sound of the idle, I checked the gauges to make sure everything was functioning. I throttled forward until the rpm gauge showed about four grand, left it there for a few seconds then backed it down to about twenty-four. Drifting forward now, I kicked a little right pedal to put her on the runway, and started rotating the stick. Back and forth, left and right, while watching the ailerons and the tail move. Checked to make sure the landing gear was locked. Everything felt good.
I checked the wind sock. It stood at about four o’clock and pointed straight down the pike to the west. I gauged the wind at about six or seven miles per hour. I taxied the plane to the west end, and swung her around one hundred and eighty degrees, and pulled the throttle back to idle. Looking up and out at the sky for traffic, I found it empty. Checked the sock again and found it pointing right at me. One more check on the gauges and the ailerons, and I eased the throttle forward until it hit the stop. Moving now, picking up speed. Keeping her straight with the pedals. I watched the airspeed gauge until it got to about forty-five, and pulled back easy on the stick. She leapt up off the ground and started to climb into the wind.
It was getting late and I didn’t have much light left, so I needed to be heading back toward The Landing. I had taken her south along the turnpike for twenty minutes and then turned her back northwest. I was coming over Gator Airpark, where I used to keep her, so I swung her around to line up on their Runway 36 to see if anyone was around. I nosed it over a bit and pulled back on the throttle. She started descending and got to the point where I had to level her off, or put her on the runway. I didn’t see any cars or any movement on the ground. I eased the stick back to bring her up level and pushed the throttle forward.
I was over the runway now, at about fifty feet and accelerating. I touched the stick to the right and put some pressure on the right pedal. She went into a slow turn, with the left wing high, knife edged. I followed the line which the open air hangers are constructed on. At fifty feet, with her cocked to the right, I looked into and through the first row of hangers the whole way down the line. Whoa, wait a minute. Mark’s airplane is missing. But the strange thing is that his car isn’t there either. Wonder what’s up? I pulled her back up straight and the Beaver climbed out. I would only be able to see for another fifteen minutes, so I pointed toward home. It didn’t make sense. Mark never flies during the week. I had seen the Drifter in the hanger recently. When was that? It was Monday morning, yesterday when I was doing the touch and goes over on Cherry Lake. I had dropped her down onto Gator on the way back, to give a wave to Randy and his daughter. Mark’s plane was tied down. I’ll have to ask Danny about it when I see him.
Thursday morning. I have to run down to the south end of Tradeport Drive , over in Orlando to see some people putting up a new distribution warehouse for one of the pharmaceutical companies. It’s a pretty fair size building. It’s going to be a multiple operation of the sortation of products and order filled packages, having three distinctly different processes. I was retained by the company for liaison purposes. Call it an outside project manager deal. They have their own talent in operational areas, but no real experience in automation. I’ve done some things for them before.
I am a fabricator at heart, but a material handling consultant by trade. Whether I like it or not, conveyors are and have been a very large part of my life. Most people don’t realize that nearly everything you purchase passes through some sort of conveyed mechanism, before it reaches the store where you purchased it. Material Handling is a broad term, encompassing everything under the umbrella of material that is moved. Stone and sand, food and drink, toys and games, office supplies, and packages. I have been in this field for so many years that it’s hard to remember how the stepping stones brought me to where I am now. I gained a good deal of knowledge and understanding through the years, specifically in the area of automated sortation. Worked with several of the larger corporations. Market leaders and market challengers. Worked with some the smaller ones too. Worked with the smaller ones, who were gobbled up by the bigger ones, who brought in new management and felt they had to shake up the world. Even though the old management was doing such a good job, that it drew the attention of those who did the gobbling. They come in and turn it into the big government frame of mind. They start looking over your shoulders and they start to regulate your doings. They start to treat you, not like you’ve been doing this for years, but rather like you’re a seven year old.
They say you need to find something that you really love to do, and then find a way to make a living out of it. It’s not always as easy as that. My fabrication roots go all the way back to when I was a kid up in Pennsylvania, building tree forts and creek rafts and down hill go karts. There are carpenters and cabinet makers. There are furniture makers, and those who design houses and sky scrapers. There are iron workers and millwrights, who turn the designs into reality. Then there are fabricators who imagine, design, and build anything. Anything that meets the requirements and the desires of the customer. For me, the enjoyment and the sense of accomplishment comes when you have looked at the problem, came up with the plan and implemented the solution, which gains productivity or makes the system much more efficient. The customer will remember your name, maybe pass it along and for sure, call you back when he needs something else.
It seems there was a problem with the design in the shipping area, and they wanted to talk to me about it. I had seen the drawings seven or eight weeks ago, and they had looked okay at the time. The project was supposed to go out for bid. They would solicit proposals from two or three of the bigger conveyor manufacturers, probably picking the lowest proposal, unless someone came in with a better concept then we had talked about. Then I heard there were some change orders, requiring the alteration of something in the drop down lanes.
I drive a Jeep. My third Grand Cherokee. This one has a Hemi under the hood. I was worried about the cost of gas, when I saw it at the dealership. Young, whipper-snapper salesman assured me it would get twenty-two miles to the gallon on the highway. “It’s got this electronic fuel distribution, spark plug shut down, kind of deal. If you maintain speed between forty and seventy, it will run on four cylinders,” he said. He could have said anything because I wanted it, three seconds after I saw it. It’s got all the bells and whistles. Who drives at seventy miles per hour on the turnpike in Florida anyway? It gets eighteen miles to the gallon, on good days.
I hear the song playing on the CD, and I reach around the steering wheel and hit the volume switch to crank it up.
It’s Getty;
…”those who wish to be
Must put aside the alienation
Get on with the fascination
The real relation
The underlying theme.”
The rock group Rush. Need I say more? Three man band out of Canada. Neil is arguably the best drummer ever to pick up the sticks. Alex was only sixteen when he and Getty got started. He can saw on that axe with the best of them. And you can’t name anyone else who can play the bass guitar, massage the keys and sing, all at the same time like Getty Lee.I have a special appreciation for talent because I am also a hack musician
Cell phone vibration snaps me back, and I turn down the volume. It’s Danny. Danny was a key player in teaching me how to fly. He had agreed to trade the flight lessons for the unrestricted use of my tandem seat plane, for excursions with his friends. Most of the pilots in my world have single seat aircraft. A two-seat, or tandem seat airplane, opens up a completely new pleasure to guys like Danny, who love to be in command of the show. In this case the show being, instructor versus student, pleasure seeker or any other prospect ripe for impression. Danny likes to impress people with his knowledge and ability of powered flight. He likes to be front stage center. Telling the jokes and the funny stories, or explaining various ways of how you can “get dead” very quickly in an airplane. He will criticize you and find fault with everything you do, so you have to find a way to throw it back at him. Making fun of something he does, to get him to laugh at himself. He is the type you want to know and hang out with and call a friend. Danny is also a little tough to figure out. He had been a Sanitation Engineer, as he liked to refer to it, for twenty some years and had worked his way into the dumpster dumping deal. There were no hassles with residential trash, and it was relatively clean. Unless something got jammed in the hopper while tilting the contents of the dumpster into it. Danny was being paid very fairly. It was one these jammed up hopper times, when Danny’s life changed forever.
He had climbed way up on top of the rig, and was using a piece of pipe to dislodge some trash from the lid of a dumpster when he slipped. The fall distance was not extremely high, but the landing was hard. There is a cylinder shaft which travels into the hopper to compact the contents. Danny landed flat on his back across the shaft. I think they airlifted him out to the hospital. End result, disability and pain. Lots of therapy learning to walk again, and lots of the addictive type chemicals. The oxy’s, and the dilaudids. Danny won’t be running any foot races, and he won’t be lifting anything heavy ever again. He gets around okay, but he also gets help pouring gasoline into the fuel tank of his plane.
The State of Florida said he can’t work, and the Waste Authority settled up, not too nicely. He draws a check from the state every month, which just about pays the mortgage. The wife has to take care of just about everything else. He does what he can to make some cash on the side, when the pain is okay. He has some good days and some really, really bad ones. But he never seems to have bad days when it’s time to fly. There are beach bums and fishing bums and motor heads. Danny is a fly bum. The part that is hard to figure out, is whether he likes having all the free time with a very limited income, better than having to put in the forty hour grind, collecting a strong paycheck with very limited time to fly. This I can tell you, he would not be the guy he is today, if he hadn’t fallen.
“Hey, whatcha doing, man” I said when I answered.
“Oh, same old, same old,” he said, and then, “long time no see.”
“Yeah, I been doing some things.”
“Hey, are you by any chance down in Orlando today?”
“Heading toward the south side right now.”
“You want to check in on Mark, maybe stop and see if he’s home?” He paused for a second and then said “His plane’s not here, and hasn’t been for days. Can’t reach him on the phone, and I don’t know his girlfriends number. It’s weird ‘cause you know, he only flies on weekends.”
“Okay, I’ll check it out, but I think he’s still mad at me.”
“Yeah probably, but just tell him I’m trying to get a hold of him. You don’t have to show up with a pizza, or anything.”
“Okay man, I’ll let you know, but it will probably be a couple of hours ‘til I get over that way.”
“Roger that, give me a shout.” It confirmed my earlier suspicion. It was not like Mark, not be in touch with Danny.
After discussing possible changes and alterations with the group at the warehouse project, I made my way north on Tradeport Drive and passed under the bridge to the point where it becomes Conway. Turned right on North Frontage. This takes you out along the toll road, where, if the timing is right, you can be thrilled by one of the big commercial airliners crossing overhead; on it’s way to touching down on the runway. Orlando International Airport is just on the other side of the six lane highway. The timing wasn’t right today. I had seen one coming in before I made the turn, so it must not be the time of day where they bring them in back to back to back.
I haven’t been down this way for awhile. I used to live over in this area, before I moved out to Lake County. Mark and I would sometimes car pool out to the airfield on Saturdays. That seems like a long time ago.
Mark Easton is a great guy. We used to be pals. He works the framing trade, where you go in and stud the walls and put up the drywall. Another crew comes in later, to do the finish work. He is very good and proficient at it. I’ve seen some of his work. He can do the curved wall thing, or hang a façade down from the ceiling. He has taught me a lot about flight and he is pretty handy with tools. He has the eye it takes to be a good body and fender guy. His father has a car place way up in Alabama somewhere. Danny told me he has a girlfriend now. Real nice girl, Danny said..
Mark caught the flying bug by paying the Warbird people down in Kissimmee to take him up in one of the aerobatics. He latched on and didn’t let go. You’ll always see him doing the low speed stall and buzzing the hangers. He has this trick, where he will put it in a quick dive to accelerate. Then, he’ll pull back the stick and send the nose nearly straight up in the air to the point just before the stall, and then ease that stick forward to the neutral zone to level it off. It’s almost like riding in an elevator. The sudden change of air direction under the wing lifts you almost straight up. He is a very good pilot, maybe one of the best that I know.
We had what they call a little falling out, some months back. I haven’t run into him since. Misunderstanding. I had received some damaged merchandise and wanted to recover the costs of the repair. Mark had done the repair work for me. I didn’t need the money, so I thought I would get the insurance reimbursement in Mark’s name and let him have the check. Big mistake. I evidently wasn’t thinking clearly, or didn’t fear the liability concerns that Mark and some others felt. Big time misunderstanding, blown way out of proportion. I tried to make it right, apologized profusely, and cancelling the insurance claim. I removed Mark’s name from every bit of documentation involved and destroyed all of it. Not good enough. Mark considered our friendship over, making it blatantly clear by telling me not to ever speak to him. Well I haven’t. I hoped it would blow over by now and maybe it has. We need to have that conversation. That’s where I’m going now. He should be home from work by this time. If he doesn’t want talk, I’ll just tell him Danny said to call him.
Mark lives in a remote trailer park off of Hoffner, just south of where Narcoosee becomes Hoffner. He has lived there for years. The rent is very cheap, and until recently, he has had no one to impress. No car in the drive area. No one answers the door, when I pound. I leave a business card saying; let’s talk, and to get in touch with Danny.
Saturday morning. I put her in the air and swung her around to the east, up over Johnny’s house. The wind sock was dead limp, so there would be very little wind. I climbed up until the altimeter showed about eleven hundred feet and then leveled off, and rotated the landing gear up. I noticed that there were no ripples on the water areas. It’s very deceiving to land on calm water. You see your reflection, and it can alter your depth perception. If the wind is moving even a little bit, it will cause ripples across the surface, making it easy to read where the surface is.
I veered off to the right once I was over the south bound turnpike interchange, and followed Highway 27 to the north. I like to fly in this area. Lots of free, open space, and plenty of places to put it down, if the engine should quit.
When I passed the north bound interchange, I turned her left and made my west toward Tex Merritt’s place. Texas Merritt had built his own landing strip on a piece of land beside his house, back in 1991. Put in a nice hanger and parked his Cessna there. He used to take it up to Georgia to conduct business on a regular basis, but that was a long time ago. Tex is up in his seventies now, and retired from flying. Very nice gentleman. We had discussed the possibility of turning the strip into a light plane commercial airport at one time, but mutually decided not to, when we learned that it wouldn’t cost justify. He wasn’t interested in selling, and I wasn’t interested in a short term lease.
Merritt’s strip is surrounded by water on two sides. There are a lot of ponds and other spots, where water stands in Florida. Not enough to actually be called a lake, but more than enough to keep it from being referred to as a swamp. The area north of Groveland, and Highway 50 into Clermont, is free from most restrictive ordinances. If you venture south of Highway 50, you enter what is called The Green Swamp. This expanse of land extends all the way to the south end of the county, down near the Davenport area. This area of land is protected, and development is limited to one residential dwelling, per ten or in some cases twenty acres of land. The tracts cannot be subdivided smaller, and the ordinances and covenants limit the owners use. Much of the real estate listed for sale in that area remains on the market for years. The owners were suckered in, by the rapid rise in property values during the real estate boom in Florida. They bought big tracts with thoughts of turning it over, and failed to liquidate before the bottom dropped out. Now, they can’t afford to let the land go for current market values, and they have to ride it out in hopes that the market will bounce back.
The water around Merritt’s place is deep enough to land a plane. It would be easy to construct a ramp to connect to the landing strip. This would make the strip a unique, multipurpose landing zone, and is what I plan to do at my place someday. Kind of a mini seaplane base.
Beyond Merritt, I followed the road to where it comes to a Y and continues paved to the left. The right fork turns to dirt and then continues back to where they run the four wheel drive monster trucks in the mud. It has a fancy name like Extreme Motor Sports Complex, or something, but everybody just calls it the Mud Bog. They run events there on certain Sundays, and it fills up with everything from Jeep CJ’s to four wheel drive school buses. The traveling caterers come in with their food rigs. The photographers capture the mud flying, while the big wheels are spinning it fifteen feet up in the air, and you can buy tee shirts and bumper stickers. I think they get about ten bucks at the gate. There was one of those reality show guys in there with his camera crew one day, and Danny took him up to do some aerial photography in my Beaver. It was supposed to air on one of the networks, but I never heard when.
The compass showed me heading almost due north. I pointed her to the east, and the sun caught in my eyes for a moment. I diverted my eyes toward the ground and that’s when I saw it. Off to the left, and partially hidden by foliage. Sitting in the water. It was a white flash of fabric, with two black stripes. Absolutely no question in my mind. I have seen that picture a hundred times from above. Airplane wing. Bright white with two black stripes angling in toward the center, from the leading edge to the trailing edge. Two stripes on each side at opposing angles. Mark Easton’s airplane.
I turned toward the downed plane, and backed the power down as I passed over head. I got a little spooked when I saw him. The cockpit of a Drifter sits out on the end of the boom tube. Way out in front of the wing. They sometimes call it a flying lawn chair. From above, the cockpit is exposed, and Mark was in the seat, head down with his headset on, his body pitched forward and slumped over to the right. He was still belted in and he wasn’t moving. I throttled up and swung it around, looking to see if there was a place to put down. He was still not moving. I realized, in that moment when my adrenaline was surging, that I was likely to take an unnecessary risk and end up crashed. So I took another moment to survey the landing.
The area to the south of where he was is swamp. The plane was resting at the north edge of the water up against the jungle type foliage of palmetto and cypress. Snake haven. Gator city. The land to the west and to the east has much of the same, only the trees are taller, making an approach impossible from either direction. I’d have to bring it in from the south, and put it down in the swamp. Scary. Hard to tell what’s in there and how deep it is. It looked like there might be about two hundred feet of water, right in front of where the Drifter stood. Might be able to slip it in and get it on the water, with enough space to slow down before I ran right into him. That might not be the hardest part. I may not be able to get out, if there is not enough water to skim across. If the floats dug into the bottom, we’d have to pull her out with a crane.
I made a long swinging curve to the south until I was maybe, half of a mile from the spot. Then I brought it back north. At nine hundred feet, I had to get it down fast so that I could bring it into the swamp. I pulled the stick all the way to the left and pushed the right rudder pedal to the floor. This is called a slip. The nose of the airplane will turn forty-five degrees to the side, while the plane still travels in the direction you are headed. The other significant factor in a slip is that the airplane drops like a rock. It will knock the glide ratio down to next to nothing. I’d have to bring it out of the slip in time, to get her straight and lined up for the approach. When the stick and the rudder are brought back to neutral, the airplane will have the natural tendency to over correct. This is the tricky part. I was too close to the tree line to pick it up and over, if this didn’t work. I pushed the left pedal to center the rudder, while pulling the stick back to the right. As soon as I felt her straightening, I goosed the stick back to the left just enough to keep her nose from going too far, while pulling the stick back to stop the drop. I leveled her off about ten feet off the water. Low and slow. Just enough throttle to keep her from stalling. There wasn’t a lot of room. I had it to the point of no return and pulled the throttle the rest of the way back. I held the stick just a little bit back from the neutral point, just to keep the nose angled slightly up and I felt the rear of the floats catch in the water. She came to rest about twelve feet from the tail of the Drifter, and in about eighteen inches of water. Luckily, the draft on the floats is about six inches. I wasted no time in getting unbelted, while hanging the headset on the top of the windshield. I was soaked. The hard drop into the swamp caused an explosion of murky, green-black water. I hoped the gauges didn’t get wet, but I didn’t take the time to look. I jumped down into the water hoping the noise and the splash had sent every living creature scrambling away.
Mark didn’t look good. As I came closer, I realized that he was either knocked out or worse. Wading through the water, I noticed three, six gallon gas cans, ratchet strapped, to the boom tube with clear tubes running out of the tops. I had seen this setup before. It’s for long distance flying. It gives the pilot the ability to rotate the fuel line from tank to tank, without having to land. What was Mark up to? I also noticed that the toolbox lid, mounted just behind the seat, had been pried open. The lid was hanging on by just one hinge. The lock was still closed and hanging from the hasp. I reached Mark, put my hand on his chest and pushed him back in the seat. The horrid smell of decaying flesh engulfed me, and I choked and turned away. Dead. He had been dead for a while.
While I was regaining my composure, I moved around the nose and over to his left side. There was a blood trail running down his tee shirt, from about the mid point of his ribs. The sudden reality of this scene caused me to freeze. Mark had been shot. Don’t touch anything, I remember thinking. Just look around. Don’t miss anything. I noticed a spot where there was a difference in the shade of black paint, on the rear of the boom behind the prop, and just forward of the tail. Mark always had a carry bag, strapped around the tube there. He would keep a sandwich, something to drink, gloves, glasses, and his cigars in there. It was missing. In an area of the shore, which could be called dry, there were two sets of mud marks, leading, trail like away from the area. The water had settled under the fuselage, and I could see something glistening on the bottom. Screwdriver. Probably used to pry the toolbox open. I looked in the toolbox and saw something very shiny and metallic looking, at the bottom. It was under a broken piece of styrofoam. I picked it up and held it up to the sun. The shine sparkled off the metal, blinding me. It was a silver butter knife; very thin and very elegant. It appeared to be the real thing. Silver. Good quality. Some kind of crest or emblem forged in the bottom of the handle, where it widened. The toolbox is the same length as the rear of the seat, about six inches wide, and about a foot deep. I picked up the piece of Styrofoam and examined it. It was a corner section, broken away from a larger piece. There was a hole drilled in it part way, but not deep enough to go all the way through. There were little, white, BB shaped pieces of it falling off in crumbles.
The only other items in the bottom were a ten millimeter, open/box combination wrench and more of the white crumbles. I noticed the main power switch was in the off position. There was gasoline in the tank with the fuel line leading to where it split off to the carburetors. This would indicate that the engine had been shut off at the switch, by someone. The landing gear appeared to be splayed out wider than I remembered. The wheels were sunk deep into the muck. Mark had to be alive when the plane hit the water. If he had lost consciousness prior, the plane would have burned in nose first. It is the natural tendency of the plane, unless the stick is pulled back. If that was the case, the Drifter would have stalled, and probably went spinning in. No way had that happened. Mark was alive when this plane landed. At least, alive enough to land it. But why was he still belted in?
He most likely did the same maneuver that I had used, coming in here. But, the Drifter has standard landing gear. The wheels are fixed. Mark was a great pilot, much better than me. He probably slipped it, until the last possible second, then straightened it out and pulled the stick all the way back. This would cause it to stall, and immediately drop. Hard. Hard enough to bury the wheels in the bottom. Maybe too hard. Maybe hard enough to knock him out, and then he bled to death while unconscious. Maybe even hard enough to knock the life right out of him.
Nothing else to look at here… Wait. I saw something in the breast pocket of Mark’s tee shirt. I reached and pulled out a match pack, with a River Ranch Resort logo. I checked the rest of his pockets and found some change and a Bic lighter in the right front jeans pocket. His wallet was still in the right rear, and there was nothing in the left rear. Moving around to the other side, I found a small plastic vial in the left front, capped with a rubber stopper. The vial contained liquid. It looked narcotic. I had never known Mark to use drugs of any kind. He didn’t even drink alcohol. What have you been doing Mark?
I took it all. Somebody killed my friend and I needed to know why. More importantly, I needed to know who. All of these things were clues. As I headed back toward the Beaver, I remembered the mud marks. I waded over to the dry area and saw they were foot prints. A set of foot marks leading out of the swamp.. There were distinct markings to show the imprints however, nothing distinguishable enough to trace the type of shoe. I couldn’t even tell the size. Perhaps a large man. There, lying about four feet into the palmettos was something I hadn’t seen before. It was the black strap that Mark had used to fasten the carry bag, to the boom. I realized then, that someone had killed him for what he was carrying. They shot him down, and then they came to get what he had on the plane. That meant they had to have followed him, or chased him in another plane.
Right about this time I got a real serious case of the willies. Shakes and cold shivers. It scared me enough to stop and look around. I listened for any noise or movement. I had to get out of there fast.
Goodbye my friend. I will find them. I will deal them the same cards they dealt you.
Chapter T hree:
In the light of the afternoon sunshine coming through the thinly draped window, it appeared to be…
I was only off the water about ten feet, when I keyed the mike.
“Gator Traffic, five, six, one, October, November… looking for Danny.”
“Go for Danny.” He replied
“Hey, where’re you at?” I said, trying to keep my voice steady
“Just come up off of Cherry Lake, It’s smooth as glass, be careful if you go in there.”
“Can you meet me at Grass Roots? I gotta show you something…” I didn’t want to say anything more than that, because I knew my voice would break.
There was a momentary pause, and then he came back on. “Roger that, be there in about three minutes.”
By now she had climbed to three hundred, and I kept her there. The trip to Grass Roots was more than three minutes, so I didn’t want to waste any speed by climbing higher. I angled her to the south in a direct line, and maximized the throttle.
David Gay is an architect who played a key role with the team of designers, who built the village of Celebration, on the south side of Kissimmee, near Walt Disney World. It a very nice, high end community with direct access roads to the parks. Utilities services to the community actually originate and operate from Disney World. There are many shops, restaurants, and other businesses located in the downtown area. Property there is priced out of reach for common folk, and they like it that way. During the Christmas season, they actually produce some kind of snow and it falls from above and blows through the town center, while carolers sing holiday cheer. A similar community exists just west of Orlando called Baldwin Park.
David Gay invested his money in land in Lake County, off of Highway 33. He laid out three thousand plus feet of grass runway, so flat and smooth that you only find it in dreams. He put up very well designed hangers, spaced adequately along the strip, and put in a community gathering building. He sold tracts of land all around the airstrip for six figure prices, and intends to develop it into a fly-in community. It is a very exclusive club. He calls it Grass Roots Airpark, and has the name painted on the roofs on the hangers so as to be seen from the air.
I started the descent in to the field and saw Danny touching down on the airstrip. Danny rolled his Buccaneer amphibian off to the left, to what is sort of a visitor airplane parking area, and turned it back around, as if to be ready to get back on the runway. I put her down and put the power to it, enough to get me to him quickly. I moved up beside where he was, while still keeping it on the runway.
“What’s going on?” Danny said, into the radio. I just looked at him straight in the eye, while shaking my head, and pointing to the microphone, at my lips. I did the cut sign, by pulling my hand across my throat from left to right, and then shook my arm with the thumb extended toward the back seat, indicating I wanted him to sit there. I did not transmit anything over the radio.
Danny climbed in, strapped the belts on and put on the headset, as I started to move. The headsets work together like an intercom. You just speak to each other without having to key the mike. None of the conversation is transmitted. I waited until we were in the air before I told him.
“Mark is dead.”
“What? What the fuck are you talking about?” Danny was incredulous.
“I found him. He’s out beyond Merritt’s, he’s been shot! I’ll show you where…”
“Did you call the cops?” Danny asked.
“No. …and I’m not gonna.”
“Why not?” he said, again incredulously.
“Because the sons of bitches that did this are going to regret it! You know how the Sheriff and the Police work. Even if they do find them, they won’t do it right. They won’t do to them what they did to Mark.”
“What are we gonna do?” Danny asked.
“After I show you where he is, get back to your truck. Call the Civil Air Patrol. Tell them you think you saw a plane down. Tell them enough about where he is, so they can meet you on the road there. You’re going to have to walk in. Keep your head together. Like you don’t know anything. When you get there, don’t talk a lot, you’ll have to identify him. Listen and remember everything they say. Let them handle it from there, and don’t tell them about me!”
“What are you gonna do?” he said.
“I’m gonna find out who did this.”
“I’m going with you” he said, seriously. “I want to find them too!”
“Not now. You need to report it. They need to get him out of there before the gators get to him. Just so you know, the planes’ got gas tanks strapped all over it. He’s been flying distances. His tool box lid has been pried off, and everything in there is gone. The carry bag is gone too, but they didn’t rob his body. I found some things on him. I don’t know what they are, or what they mean, but I’m going find out. I need some time. I’ll catch up with you when I know some more.”
I took it way out north toward the Bog, and then I brought it back south, so that the sun would be behind us. I had climbed to about nine hundred, and I only wanted to make one pass. We had both surveyed the area, and other than some cars on the road, there didn’t seem to be any human activity. I moved it a little west so that Danny could see the plane, from the left side. I stayed far enough away so as not to be spotted too closely. I had committed a crime. I had removed evidence from a murder scene, and I didn’t want anyone to know, or to be able to place me there. They could put me in jail for what I did. I had been smart by taking with me, everything that I touched. I left no fingerprints on the plane. The only other thing I touched was Mark, and you can’t lift finger prints off a tee shirt. I trusted Danny to keep his mouth shut and play it like I had told him.
When we got close enough for Danny to see where he was, I put her to the west and did a long slow turn southward, and then made a beeline for Grass Roots. When I put down, Danny and I promised to stay in touch. I needed to know what the Civil Air people and the Sheriff’s Office were saying about it. Danny wanted to help me investigate, and he made me promise to call him this afternoon. I taxied it down to the end of the runway and turned it around. I pushed the throttle forward, put her into the wind and took the Beaver back to The Landing.
I brought her up over the ridge and lined her up with the runway. I noticed a car in the drive, right before I started the descent. It was The Widow Allman. She’s not really a widow, that’s just what we call her. It drives her nuts, so we try not to say it to her face. It started a couple of years ago, when feeling less inhibited as a result of the Tequila we’d been knocking back, she answered a question from a guy, trying to hit on her in the local pool hall we go to. The question referred to the reason why such a good looker wasn’t married. She responded saying she’d driven her husband crazy and he jumped off the overpass right in front of a semi. The guy quickly left the building. We hadn’t let her off the hook, until the time when she quietly refused to talk to any of us. We have refrained from poking the finger and twisting it since. Sometimes a joke will run its course, and then it has to be buried.
Barbie Allman is about thirty six or seven. Strikingly pretty face and a great body to go with it. She has preserved herself very well. She weighs in at about one hundred and ten pounds, and has kept it there for as long as I’ve known her. She has two kids, to different fathers, and she can’t seem to keep a boyfriend longer than the time it takes for the initial lust to wear off. The first child was conceived at the very young age of seventeen, when she was too naive to understand the timing of her body. She attended the high school graduation ceremony, before she started to show. She must not have learned much about ovulation, or chose not to use protection, because the next one came along in the following year. Both would-be husbands hit the trail upon learning the news. I guess her youngest girl would be about eighteen now. I had actually gotten her oldest one started in driving. I took her out to one of those gated community developments. The ones, where they sell the buyers on country seclusion, by creating a long entrance road. Taking them far off the main highway. They have a flowery, curbed island, between the inbound, and the outbound lanes, with turn around breaks every so many hundred feet. I put her in the seat, buckled her up, and put the Jeep way down in low gear. I had her drive up the inbound lane, make the turn at the break, and then drive back down the outbound lane. We did it for about twenty minutes. It introduced her to the gas and the brake. She blows the horn and waves whenever she sees me now.
Barbie is the type of girl who knows her responsibilities come first. She takes care of her own, and I have never known them to want for anything. She has that rare quality, not often found in single mothers, of keeping her children humble. She has made them aware of the state of the world, and their place in it financially. She’s done pretty well for herself, over the years. Borrowed enough money to get through nursing school and then paid it back. Owns a house in a local subdivision, and makes the mortgage every month. She trades the car in, every couple of years, for another two year old model.
She is more the quiet type than the big boisterous type you often find these days, in southern girls. Her life and times have tamed any of that type of spirit which may have existed, long ago. She never seems to be in a rush, almost the opposite, where she will always get to where she going in time to catch the curtain rising. She would never be late, or keep you waiting for her when picking her up for the date. She would consider that rude. Rather, she would acknowledge the time required to prepare herself, and get started early. She will get attached to that specific type of man, who strikes her interest quickly, and share herself willingly. This is not out of any desperate desire to become attached or betrothed. It is simply because she loves to have sex.
I must admit that we have shared a night or two, or sixteen, over the years. We have that type of special deal where, if either of us finds the need, and a warm body is not on the current schedule, we can be the surrogate for each other. She thinks love making is therapeutic.
She had herself perched on the hood of her car with her feet on the bumper. She was wearing jeans and sandals. She had her long brown hair pony tailed. She has medium brown eyes, and it is hard to see the difference between their color, and the shade of her skin. She keeps the sun tan going all year long. The top she was wearing said a lot about the way she had preserved herself. It was drawn tight across her breasts in a way that enhanced their pert, apple size and shape. The three buttons coming down from the collar were undone.
She sat there waiting patiently during the time it took me to put the Beaver to bed. I came out of the barn and pushed the button which closes the hydraulic bi-fold door.
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