Falling in Love

  "And very good, that is!" Mike said. "Leaves more money for games."

  Jim laughed at him, as usual. "You could build one," he said to Lourdes.

  "I guess I could. I'd worry about liability if I ever sold it, having my name on there as the builder for the whole life of the plane. Maybe I should restore one instead? But I guess I never even thought about it because I've been living out of apartments in L.A. No hangar. No where to even consider it."

  "Well, then. A seminar on owner maintenance sounds really good," Jim said.

  "It starts in about twenty-five minutes," she said, "so it's about time to go. Afterwards, I thought it'd be nice to take my Garmin G.P.S. over to one of those big steel vendor buildings. I heard I could get my database updated, and then I'd like to just get lost shopping for-anything. Mindless enjoyment. Just see what's there. I'm gonna buy a Will Smith, if I can find one."

  "Great," Jim said with a chuckle. "Can I come with you?"

  Mike laughed, and acted like he would crack a joke on that, but one look at the two of them-and with uncharacteristic restraint-he went back to his French toast.

  "I don't know," Lourdes said to Jim. "Can you?"

  CHAPTER 19

  Large tents, like the flight line caf? they were enjoying, reminded Lourdes of the tents in "M*A*S*H"-only the ones in "M*A*S*H" were Army "drab" green, dirty, and full of comic surgeons during dreadful wartime, and the tents at Oshkosh were white, clean, and full of pilots on vacation during a major airshow. But they both had wood or metal frames inside, rugged tarping stretched over them, and were secured by large, rope guy lines angling out to heavy steel stakes driven into the ground.

  As Lourdes and Jim left the caf?, they saw a slim, frail, quite elderly man leaning into one of the white guy lines, holding on to it.

  Lourdes could see the man's face was pleasant, even happy. But she could also see he was distressed and trying not to show it.

  She stopped, and Jim stopped with her.

  "Hello," Lourdes said to the man, kindly. "I'm a nurse. Are you alright?"

  "Pretty good," the man said, keeping his smile.

  "You look a little tired," Jim said.

  "Yeah, well, I am, but that's okay. In pretty good shape, actually."

  "Oh, good," Lourdes said. "You want to come inside and sit with us a while? Have some coffee? Chairs are pretty comfortable."

  The man looked like he considered it, but rejected the idea. "No. I'll be fine. Just need to rest my left knee a little. Trick knee. Arthritis. Doc thinks I need to get it replaced, and I think he's right."

  "Ok," Lourdes said. "So I'm Lourdes. This is Jim. What's your name?"

  "Heath."

  "Where are you headed, Heath?" Jim asked.

  "Over to Exhibit Hangar C," Heath said. "Big, steel thing. Full of vendors. About a half-mile that-a-way." He indicated with a toss of his hand. "Got my daughter over there working a booth. I'm helping her, but I wanted to roam the flight line in the early morning before it got hot and see the planes. Was doing fine. Just need to take it easy on this knee."

  "Yeah, well, they can flare up sometimes. How's it feel to walk on it?" Lourdes asked.

  "It's smarting some. If I rest it, it'll be fine."

  Lourdes looked the man over. He appeared to be in his eighties, though fairly fit like he said. But he also seemed tired, keeping some weight off the left knee.

  "Okay," Lourdes said. "But you know, we're heading that way as well." She indicated her purse. "I have my Garmin, right here, and I'm going to find a place to get the database updated."

  "Oh, I've heard of that. They do that over there. Yep."

  "And," Jim said. "we thought we'd take in some shopping."

  "Maybe we could walk together?" Lourdes asked him.

  Heath laughed. "Well, I hate to turn down a good offer, so lets enjoy." He reached out and took Lourdes' arm, leaning on it some.

  "It's your left knee?" Jim asked. "Put your left hand into my right, and stiffen your arm a bit. And I'll pull up a little, taking some weight off that left knee. It'll probably work real well."

  "Okay," Heath said.

  They started walking through the grass, between tents and aircraft displays toward Exhibit Hangar C.

  Lourdes walked on Heath's right side. Ideally, in a hospital, she'd have used a gait belt. But there, she spent some time looking at his clothes. He had a sturdy shirt on, she noted. If he tripped or teetered, she felt she could grab him and help keep him from falling over, and maybe his arm, if his knee collapsed-

  "This is working," Heath noted.

  Jim kept walking him.

  Lourdes realized she was probably worrying about the man too much, but she nonetheless watched Heath's respiration. It was normal. She couldn't check his pulse, but he seemed to be doing better with the help and the rest.

  Heath slipped his right arm through her left and walked arm in arm. "No need to nurse me, dearie," he said. "I'm fine. But I do like the company."

  "Busted," she said.

  "And keeping good company," Jim said. "Look at what we're doing! The three of us out here in the middle of miles of sculpted lawns full of good people and good food. Sky so clear-CAVU all the way to the moon. What could be better? Smell that grass?"

  They all took a whiff.

  "You a pilot, Heath?" Jim asked.

  "Yep. Always have been, since Adam. I soloed a Fleet Biplane and got my ticket in a Cub- Oh, Lordy Land o' Goshen, would you look at that. It was like that one over there. Would you believe it?"

  They walked over to: a yellow Cub with black trim, black engine on front, black tires, wooden propeller.

  "Oh," Heath said. "I've been seeing a lot of them this year, here."

  "A large group flew in this weekend," Jim said. "There are probably two hundred and some down in the South Forty, that way."

  Lourdes' mind was more on Heath than the planes.

  "Two hundred?" Heath asked, then laughed. "Probably took 'em a week to get here-no matter where they flew in from."

  "Not fast planes," Jim said.

  "No, but they got 'beauty of flight' written all over 'em."

  They walked up to the yellow Cub and looked it over. Heath let go of their arms to walked up to the engine.

  "This," he said in admiration to Jim and Lourdes, "is a Continental 40 engine up front. I didn't even know they were still in operation." Heath looked at the plane as a whole. "This looks like maybe a 1937 J3C-40?" He turned to Lourdes. "The one I soloed in was a 1938-and it didn't look nearly this good."

  "Not even when it was new," Jim said, agreeing.

  "I know!" Heath said, moving to walk around the rest of the plane. He put his hand up to block some glare and peeked in the window, without touching it, to see the cockpit instrument panel.

  "And see these rags?" Heath said, pointing to the wings. "Fabric work is an art form that was getting lost until we got some homebuilts that started using it more. Now it's coming back, and I'm glad."

  "Seems fragile to me," Lourdes said, making conversation. "I wonder if hail could take it out."

  "No, no. It's good. Actually strengthens the wing, if it's done right." Heath brought Lourdes' attention to the fabric seams. "Look how taught that is. See how smooth. Look at how straight the seams are. That doesn't just happen; someone had to place it there. Whoever did this was an artist," Heath said, standing back to look at the plane. "No way was it his first plane to cover."

  "What if the fabric weakens over the years from the sun and weather?" Lourdes asked. What if it gets injured in hail?"

  "You mean dented up like 'spam cans'?" Heath asked, using a cliquish name for aluminum covered, light, general aviation aircraft. "If this fabric gets messed up for any reason, you just replace it," Heath said. "A lot easier than metal wings with all the rivets. Just replace the piece, dope it up, and paint it."

  Lourdes looked at it, mystified. She had never seen it done. Mechanics was not her strong suit.

  "But not this guy," Heath sai
d, admiring the Cub. "He wouldn't patch it. He'd probably redo the whole thing. He's an artist. You can tell. You guys fly, too?"

  "Yup," Jim said with a smile.

  "Since Eve," Lourdes said, nodding her head in affirmation.

  "That's my girl," Heath said. "I like it when the wife flies, also."

  Lourdes and Jim looked at each other.

  "Too many times wives sit at home complaining the husband is out wasting all their money on what they could be spending at the mall."

  Heath reached his hand up to the left wing on the Cub and almost touched it.

  Lourdes knew it was etiquette never to touch someone else's plane-it was even common to clasp your hands behind your back when getting close to a plane, just to put people at ease, in case they were looking.

  Jim watched the man admire the work of flying art.

  Heath clasped his hands behind his back and walked around the plane as if he were preflighting it.

  "He's got a modern E.L.T. in it," Heath said, referring to the Emergency Locator Transmitter. "I guess you have to have that."

  "You know what you do?" Heath asked them, stopping his circuit by the empennage to talk with them. "You get in one of these Cubs right here-or, frankly, anything else like it. You sit on the runway with it, and when cleared, you slowly advance the throttle until you take off. It only takes a few seconds, because this baby will fly in a breath of wind."

  Lourdes and Jim watched his smile grow from ear to ear as he lived his virtual flight.

  "And in about," Heath stopped to laugh at himself, "two seconds, you're lifting off the runway into the air-but slow enough you can still see the ground you're lifting off of. It's right there," he pointed to the ground, "because you're flying without the door. You took it off. The wind is only going by at fifty miles an hour." He laughed again. "'Cause the engine only has forty horses!"

  Lourdes and Jim chuckled with him, his laugh was infectious.

  "So there you are, fifteen feet above the runway, watching the perfect little imperfections on it drift under you, and you decide to raise it up a little higher. You pull back on the stick-right there between your knees-you feel the little plane change attitude, and she lifts up a few more feet-moving with every little thing the wind does.

  "Then you send out for pizza, have lunch, read the paper-and the next thing you know, you're approaching the end of the runway!"

  Lourdes and Jim were charmed.

  "So you lift 'er up a little more to clear the trees, and you're gone! Sweet Jesus! You carve out a curve twenty feet above the trees and arc left slow as you please-flying like a bird which also means close enough to see people smile up at you.

  "You can actually wave at them, and they'll wave back. I've done it." Heath laughed at himself again. "The bucket thing. I haven't done that."

  Lourdes asked, "You mean where you lower a bucket down from the plane in flight to someone on the ground? They put something in it and you pull it back in?"

  "Right. Haven't done any of that airshow 'drunk-flying-act' either, but I can see why it has been done in a Cub. Sturdy little thing. You could just about land it in one of those big oaks over there, like a Swallow," he said.

  Heath smiled as he walked around the Cub. The logo was perfect on tail. The "N number" was perfect on fuselage. "Someone really does nice work," he said.

  "Lourdes, here, has a Cessna 150," Jim said to Heath. "Has it over there on the other side of those trees."

  "Ah," Heath said. "Beautiful. That'd maybe be your 'Cub' to you, like this is to me? Those are good planes, too. Still gentle enough to enjoy. Thousands of people soloed in them. That what you soloed in?" he asked Lourdes.

  "No, no. That was in a 152 over at El Monte airport, years ago. And then an instructor augered-in not long after I got my ticket."

  "Oh!" both Jim and Heath said.

  Lourdes could see she opened the door on that one.

  "But not with me in it. As I hear it, he had a student, and he was practicing forced landing procedures with him-only he really cut the engine."

  "Yikes," Jim said.

  "Bad news," Heath said.

  "So they went through their procedures in practice," Lourdes continued, "and when they got ready to start the engine again, it wouldn't start. So they had to actually make that forced landing-which would have been fine, but there was this little fence-"

  "They are hard to see!" Heath said.

  "From the air," Jim confirmed.

  "-and their mains caught the fence and turned 'em over."

  Jim and Heath both looked in pain.

  "I'm told they walked away from it, which was great" Lourdes said, "but the plane was kind of bent all over. So, so much for that. And I liked that little plane."

  "Well, I'm glad they walked away," Heath said. He walked up behind the right wing then around it to the propeller. "These old wooden propellers?" he said. "I think not as efficient as the more modern ones? But you feel like you're flying class when you fly behind 'em.

  "And you know: spending a week to get to lunch-" Heath looked down the length of the fuselage, bright yellow in the morning sun, "is spending time to live your life. Mostly, people are thinking about hurrying up to get somewhere, or wishing they had this or that other bigger-better thing, when they don't realize how much they have right there in front of them. Right now. I'm approaching the end of my life-"

  "You look fine!" Jim said.

  "Son, I'm ninety-three. I don't know when it'll be, but it's likely sooner 'n later, so lets be real? Because what I'm saying is, when I look back, the things I remember- You know, there's not that much satisfaction in worrying about things. It never brought me any happiness. What matters is the golden moments."

  Heath reached out against his will to touch the fabric on the Cub's left wing. Lourdes noticed evident pain on Heath's face. He seemed to need something in the Cub so much.

  "Especially," Heath said, "the golden moments spent doing 'nothing,' when you simply appreciate being here."

  The three of them stood in front of the Cub and looked at it's yellow majesty on the green grass, surrounded by other aircraft on static display, white tents, and people walking by under blue sky.

  Jim reached over to hold Lourdes' hand.

  She let him.

  "And it seems to me that worrying about the past is just as bad as worrying about the future. You get locked into that other stuff, and you miss the fact that you're alive. A short blessing, life is."

  Heath patted the wing strut like an old friend he knew he'd see again later.

  "Now look at me wax on," Heath said. "The air sure is good this morning, isn't it?"

  "Beautiful," Jim said.

  "And the temperature?" Heath asked Lourdes.

  "Perfect," she said.

  Heath slipped an arm through their arms, and they started moseying again in the direction of Hangar C.

  A young lady in her thirties walked by nibbling at an ice cream bar.

  "Hey, Darlin'," Heath called to her. "Where did you get that?"

  "Right over there," she said.

  "If it was a snake it'd have bit me," he said, then turning to Lourdes and Jim, "You two?"

  "Sure," Lourdes said.

  They walked over. "Three, please," Heath said.

  Jim handed Lourdes an ice cream bar and kissed her on the lips before she had a chance to take a bite.

  Heath laughed. "Blushing! I love it!"

  CHAPTER 20

  There were four large, steel buildings on Wittman Regional used for vendor booths-more like oversized airplane hangars than commercial buildings downtown. Exhibit Hangars A, B, C, and D, arranged in a square just inside the pedestrian entrance to the show, had every kind of aviation item in them anyone could imagine from antique memorabilia to the most advanced avionics, software, miscellaneous parts, parachutes, maps, gadgets, doodads, trinkets, and widgets.

  Surrounded by thousands of shoppers cruising the aisles, the three of them walked in to Hangar C an
d found Heath's daughter at a counter in a long aisle of booths.

  Jim noticed the lady was an attractive blonde in her sixties.

  Lourdes was pleased to see that Heath walked with even less of a limp on getting there than he did back at the tent caf?.

  "Finally," his daughter said. "There you are. I've been worried sick."

  Heath smiled and shook his head. "Told you I might be a long time. Wanted to wander and look at planes-which is exactly what I did. Let me show you a couple of good folks. This here's Jim and Lourdes. They went browsing with me."

  Jim put his hand out to shake the lady's hand.

  Lourdes smiled at her. "Hello," she said.

  "Hello. I'm Adelaide."

  "Cool name," Jim said.

  "Named after my Uncle Ben's wife. Dad, here, been giving you any trouble?"

  "Not a bit of it," Jim said. "More like he's been showing us around."

  "We happened to link up with him outside a tent caf? over near the flight line, and we walked back over this way with him. He was showing us planes."

  "He knows them!" Adelaide said, then turning to Heath, "How'd your knee hold up? You should have taken your scooter."

  There was a red electric three-wheeler sitting by the curtain partition behind them.

  "He got his right hip replaced a few years ago, but that knee's gonna need one."

  "It's okay," Heath told her, with a little warning look to Lourdes and Jim. "Wasn't no big deal. Don't wanna use that scooter if I don't have to."

  "Well, you have to," she said. "I don't want you to fall-think of it like seatbelts in a plane. You use 'em even if you don't think you'll need to."

  "Use it or lose it," Heath said. "Walk as long as you're able."

  Lourdes and Jim laughed and chatted with them for a while, and then excused themselves to shop on their own.

  "Subsequently," Heath said with a smile in parting. "Here: take one of our cards, just in case." Heath picked one up off the counter.

  "Yes, thanks for looking after him."

  "Oh, it wasn't 'looking-after,'" Lourdes said, gladly taking his card.

  "Kind of reminded me of a few things," Jim said. "It was our pleasure."

  "Well, y'all come back any time. You hear?" Adelaide said.