Wildside

  I shook my head. “Uh, uh.”

  “Lumber?” asked Marie. “There’s plenty of trees over there.”

  I shook my head again.

  Rick said, “You don’t need to fly anywhere to go for lumber or oil. There would be plenty in a Texas never visited by man. Which is it, Charlie?” He paused. “Gold or silver?”

  I sketched a salute at Rick with one finger.

  “Gold.” I said.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO SEE ANY PREDATORS.”

  Marie and I flew the Mooney to San Antonio the next day. We took four female pigeons with us, their cages strapped into the backseats. I let Marie get some simulated instrument time in, “under the hood,” as I flew as safety pilot. This entailed her wearing a baseball cap with an aluminum screen that blocked her view out the windshield, but let her see the instruments.

  We walked the pigeons half a mile to an air freight company that handled live cargo, and shipped them to the San Diego Zoo using the same fake return address. I hoped they’d arrive all right.

  Then we walked over to the main passenger terminal and did the pay telephone thing again, calling the National Zoo, first.

  “David Elsner here.”

  “Have you decided about the pigeons?”

  “Which pigeons?”

  “The passenger pigeons—what did you think I was asking about?”

  “I wasn’t sure it was you. We haven’t gone public with their existence—for all I knew, you were calling about one of the zoo’s carrier pigeons.”

  “Well, now you know. What did you decide?”

  “We’ll take them.”

  I gave him the account number. Like the San Diego Zoo he kicked a bit about the payment up front, but I remained firm. “You send the money, we’ll send the pigeons.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. I called the Nature Conservancy next. The woman there threw me a curve ball. “We’ll give you a million dollars for all you have. Provided, of course, that they’re the real thing.”

  I paused, seriously tempted.

  Into the gap she asked, “How many do you have?”

  I flinched. “I have four. One hundred thousand as previously indicated. You already know they’re the real thing.” One million dollars? “Perhaps we can discuss more pigeons after delivery of these.”

  She started to argue.

  “Look. Right now I’m selling these four. I don’t have to sell them to you. They could be sold elsewhere. Since you already have the male, that’d be a pity.”

  Quickly, she said, “Agreed. How do we pay you?”

  I gave her the account number. She noted it down, then said, “We’ll transfer 125,000.”

  “Why? The price is 100K for the four.”

  “Twenty-five thousand more as a fee that you will talk to us later.”

  “I said maybe I’d sell you more pigeons.”

  “Just to talk. It doesn’t obligate you to anything more than that.” She paused and I heard her moisten her lips. “My father saw the last passenger pigeon in the Cincinnati Zoo when he was a young boy. You know, the human race doesn’t often get a second chance like this.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I said, then hung up.

  I leaned my head against the wall by the phone kiosk.

  “What’s wrong?” Marie asked.

  “You want something to eat?”

  “Give me a break. Aren’t they paying the money?”

  I started walking down the terminal, toward a concession area. “Softer. Do you want the whole world to know? Yes, they’re paying the money. They’re doing their best to make me feel guilty, too.”

  “About the money?”

  “About endangering a species.”

  She rolled her eyes. “But you’re not. How many are there on the other side?”

  I inhaled, long and deep, then exhaled slowly. “Millions. You’re right. It makes me feel bad, though.”

  She nodded. “I know what you mean. It’s hard to keep it secret. My father’s bought the corporate internship story. He’s pleased that I’ll make more money than Dillard’s will pay, but it’s very hard not to tell him the truth.”

  I swallowed. “Don’t.”

  She shook her head. “Of course not. But it’s still hard and it must be harder for you, talking to those people who want to know so badly.”

  “Oh. Yeah, speaking of which—” I turned back from the concession stand and went to another phone kiosk.

  Mr. Saunderson of the Sierra Club was ready to pay. I gave him the account number with some misgiving, remembering the trouble I’d had the first time I talked to him. Still, I gave it to him and got off quickly.

  “What next?” Marie asked.

  “Let’s go see a man about a plane.”

  We flew north to a small municipal field at San Marcos. In the pilots’ lounge at the fueling station we found a short, dumpy man with muttonchop sideburns and a baseball cap with fake military markings.

  “Mr. Vail?” I asked.

  “That’s me. You Charlie Newell?”

  “Yessir.”

  He pointed at the door. “Osprey’s this way.”

  We followed him out and around the corner. There was a small yellow-and-white airplane. It was a fiber and foam composite seaplane, with the engine mounted above and behind the two-seater cockpit. It had streamlined floats below the wings and they cleared the ground on extended landing gear.

  “It’s cute,” said Marie.

  The man looked at her and smiled indulgently. “It’s a beaut, isn’t it?”

  I looked at it dubiously. “What’s its cruise speed?”

  “One-thirty. Top is one-forty. Stalls at sixty-three.”

  “Range?”

  “Three hundred and fifty, at cruise, with reserves.”

  I winced inwardly. It was too small and too slow, but the price was right and it was a kit. It could be built on the other side, if we had to.

  Vail pointed his finger in the air. “Shall we take a ride?”

  “Uh. I’d like to see the inspection papers, if I could, and your license and logbook.”

  He looked insulted.

  “No offense. My dad flies for the airlines. He’d kill me if I ever got in a plane without inspecting the paperwork. Besides—if I buy it, I’ll be looking at this stuff first anyway, right?”

  He shrugged and dug the paperwork out of the plane. It was in order, right down to the last engine service. His pilot log was okay. To ease things, I gave him my log and license to examine while I went over his.

  He had half the hours that I did and didn’t have his Instrument Flight rating. Humph.

  We preflighted it together. The cockpit canopy hinged at the rear, latching at the very front of the plane. When I saw that, I almost backed out, but the latch was doubled. If it failed in flight, it would flip right back into the engine and prop. More and more, this seemed like a poor choice.

  Twenty minutes later, I knew it was.

  “What’d you think?” he asked, once we were back on the ground.

  “Honestly?”

  He winced. “Don’t like it, eh?”

  “It’s too small. Every time you change engine settings it dives or pitches up because the line of thrust is above the plane. If you reduced power abruptly while landing, you could pitch up and stall the airplane well above the ground. Not good. It’s also too stiff and heavy in the ailerons. And it might land okay on water in still air, but I’d hate to see what it would do in a heavy chop. Sorry. It’s too small for us.”

  He looked unhappy. “Well, now you know why I want to sell it.”

  I offered to pay him for his gas, but he shook his head. “Nah. Didn’t use that much.”

  Marie and I left. “Was it really that bad?” she asked, once we were in the air flying back to Bryan.

  “You could get used to the handling weirdness. But it doesn’t have the range, it doesn’t have the capacity, it doesn’t have the landing gear fo
r a rough field. The only thing it has going for it is its price. I thought we might be able to get it through the door, but that one-piece composite construction means we’d practically have to rebuild it if we took the wings off. It’s just not right for our needs.” I smiled. “You know what Rusty says about flying boats, don’t you?” Rusty was one of the flight instructors at the Brazos flying club.

  She nodded and we said in unison, “They’re not really boats. And they’re not really planes.”

  We made one more stop, at Easterwood, to top off the tanks, then flew on to the ranch. The rent on the T-hangar was up in two days and Dad wasn’t going to renew it.

  Marie handled the landing, floating the plane on the ground effect until the last possible mph of airspeed was bled off, then set it gently down. It rolled to a stop quickly on the soft field. We hand pushed it backward into the hangar, cleaned the bugs off, and locked it up.

  Joey met the truck from the lumberyard at the ranch gate and let them in, riding back to the barnyard on the running board. The rest of us were waiting by the open barn door.

  “Got a bill of materials for Charles Newell,” said the driver, climbing down with a clipboard in his hand.

  “That’s me,” I said.

  He handed me the clipboard. “If you’ll check them off while we unload, it’ll go more quickly.” He looked up at the barn. “Great barn. You going to extend it?”

  I looked up from the clipboard. “Something like that.”

  They used the truck’s hoist and began unloading bundles of wood, plywood siding, roofing materials, bags of dry premixed concrete, and fasteners. Last off were five forty-foot-long steel I-beams, for the roof expanse.

  “All there,” I said, and signed it off. Joey followed them back to the gate, to secure it, and we got busy.

  While Joey, Clara, and Rick moved the hay, I started up the tractor and moved it out into the yard, pointing back at the barn. Then Marie and I made a sledge out of a one-inch sheet of plywood by hammering two four-by-fours lengthwise along its edges, then screwing two heavy eye bolts near the end of each four-by-four. We left the flat side down and hooked it to the back of the tractor with chain.

  Clara and Joey took up the shotgun and rifle and checked the tunnel, then opened the far side.

  “All clear,” Joey shouted down the passageway.

  I was very nervous. All three doors to the other side were open; the barn door and both sides of the tunnel. The air pressure was obviously lower on the other side, too—a brisk wind pulled pieces of hay down the floor of the tunnel.

  Rick, Marie, and I began throwing lumber onto the sledge. When it was piled to the point of instability, I dragged it down the tunnel with the tractor, Rick riding atop the sledge and steadying the load. I slowed at the far doorway until Joey waved me ahead. He and Clara stood guard outside, facing different directions. I pulled the sledge off to the side, then Rick and I spilled the material off and dashed back for another load.

  It took an hour to move everything. The steel I-beams were too long for the sledge, so we dragged them two at a time, with more chain.

  At the end of the hour, I was exhausted. If we’d been able to switch places, things would’ve been better, but I was the only other person with firearms experience, and nobody else had driven the tractor. This would have to change.

  We closed up the tunnel, restacked the hay, then Clara and Joey swept away the tire and drag marks in the barnyard and barn interior.

  Thirty minutes later, my dad and mom drove up to find the five of us in front of the hangar “waxing” the Mooney. Actually, we’d waxed it in the morning before the lumber arrived but we had cans of wax open and were buffing it with clean rags.

  “Hi,” I said as they got out of the car.

  “What a nice surprise,” said Mom. She picked up the can of wax and peered at the contents list, squinting at the fine print.

  Dad walked up, then pointed to a section of the wing I was buffing. “Missed a spot.”

  “Ah.” I rubbed a bit of dried wax from the crack between the wing and the flap. It was the kind of thing Dad did, always pointing out the defects, and, normally, it would bug the shit out of me.

  This time, however, I’d put that wax there twenty minutes before for just that purpose. I guess I’d hoped to be able to “discover” it myself. Ah well.

  “Are the bags in the trunk?” I asked, polishing the last spot.

  “Yes.” He handed me the car keys.

  Joey cupped his hands and I tossed them to him. He and Rick went to the car while I opened the Mooney’s baggage compartment.

  “We fueled it at Easterwood, then topped it from cans when we got back here.”

  “We?” he asked.

  “Marie and I did some cross-country IFR work yesterday.”

  He nodded, turning to Marie. “How’d it go?”

  “Great.”

  “So, how’s this summer program working out, that your mother told me about?” he said, turning back to me.

  “Good, so far, though it doesn’t really start until Monday.”

  “That’s good.” He started to preflight the plane.

  Rick and Joey returned with their luggage and I stowed it, putting Dad’s flight bag in the front.

  Dad completed the exterior check, double-checked the door on the luggage compartment, and climbed in to get to the left-hand seat. The Mooney has one door on the right, so the pilot has to enter before the passenger in the right-hand seat. I helped Mom up to the wing step. She buckled in and I said, “Have a great vacation. Don’t bring me back one of those T-shirts that says, ‘My parents went to Colorado and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.’ ”

  Mom blinked and, after a beat, laughed. “Time will tell.”

  Dad said, “We’ll be back next Tuesday—be sure and mow the strip.”

  “Right. Fly safe.” I backed away without closing the door. In this heat they’d taxi to the end of the runway with it open. Dad shouted out “Clear!” and we moved over by the car. He started up the power plant, moved the props to coarse, and started taxiing away.

  He did his engine run-up at the end of the runway, then, after Mom shut the door, he put the throttle to the firewall, accelerated smoothly, and lifted off. As he started his climbing turn to the north, he wagged his wings.

  I lifted my hand involuntarily to wave back, even though they wouldn’t be able to see me. I turned away, angrily.

  “Come on, guys. Let’s get back to the other side.”

  The temperature on the wildside was in the upper sixties and dry, a welcome change from our side’s eighty-nine degrees and ninety percent humidity. The wind was from the south and it waved the buffalo grass like water. There were a few dots of black to the east that might be buffalo, but nothing close.

  The air was clean in a way that surprised the nose, the mouth, and the lungs. I mean, the ranch was out in the country, but I had neighbors with propane and diesel tractors, pickup trucks, irrigation pumps. There was a coal-fired power plant forty miles away. And those neighbors who grew cotton used insecticides and fertilizers.

  There were no neighbors on this side. It seemed like a sin to run the tractor here—each puff of exhaust a profane act.

  This time I stood guard, circling slowly on the hillside above the doorway, while Rick and Joey stacked the materials, using four-by-fours to keep them off the ground. Marie took a tape measure and a compass and started laying out the walls, directing Clara, who marked the corners with wooden stakes, then strung string three feet off the ground.

  Rick and Joey finished organizing the supplies and joined me on the hillside.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  Joey shrugged tiredly without saying anything and Rick said, “I could use a break. How much sunlight do we have?”

  I looked at my watch. “Five hours, though we don’t want to push it. We want to be able to see any predators.”

  “So,” said Joey, “what do you want to do first?”

  I knew
exactly what should be done first, but said instead, “You’re the only one of us who’s worked in construction. Why don’t you supervise this job?”

  “Oh, yeah?” He wiped sweat from his face.

  “Keep in mind that we need to get the big stuff done by Sunday afternoon, the stuff that takes all of us. You guys start flight school on Monday and Marie and I will be working on the rest off and on.”

  He straightened. “Where are those plans?” He walked off toward Marie.

  Rick waited until he was out of earshot and laughed softly. “He bitched and bitched about this work the whole time we were stacking stuff. You made him want to do it.”

  I smiled. “Look out. He’ll work us hard.”

  Want power in another universe? Use an extension cord. Want water? Run a hose.

  Okay, so I had to send Rick into town to buy enough heavy duty extension cord and industrial water hose to reach, but it worked. I had my doubts. First time I drove the tractor into the tunnel, to see if it would fit, I’d expected it to stop working halfway down the tunnel.

  After all, if it’s a different universe, who says it has to have the same laws?

  I think I’ve read too much science fiction.

  We set the uprights in concrete, in holes at least four feet deep. I say “at least” because the ground closest to the door was higher than the farthest ground, and we had to dig the holes deeper to keep the roof line at the proper slant (high in front, low in back). We didn’t worry about leveling the floor inside, but we did keep the walls horizontally square by digging an appropriate trench in the high ground.

  The concrete was set by Saturday night, and Sunday morning we raised the I-beams, using the tractor as the muscle for a pulley. We installed four-by-fours as roof joists and started covering them with one-inch sheets of plywood.

  “Jesus,” Joey asked, taking a break from boosting panels up to Rick. “Why’d you go with one-inch? We gonna be walking around up there?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But it’s a sure bet that even if we don’t, something will. I’d just as soon not have one of those sabertooths come crashing in on me.”

  “Ah! Good point, that. Very good point. What are we going to do about the walls, then?”