The Last Pilot: A Novel (33 page)

The line went dead. He sunk back into his pillows and exhaled slowly. Jesus. Outside, the light was fading. He just wanted to go home. He reached his hand across to the sleeping pills. The pain in his chest was dull. He swallowed one with water and shut his eyes and waited for the darkness to come.

The wind flicked the curtain and banged the window. It was the middle of the night. He stirred. Another bang, louder. Maybe there was another tropical storm about to hit the Cape? There hadn’t been any concerns for the launch, but those things could move pretty fast. He sat up. His head felt groggy. He tried to get out of bed. His feet fumbled in the gloom for the cold floor. He looked up. There was a figure standing in the window.

Jesus
, Harrison said.

What’s a pudknocker like you doing in a place like this?

Pancho?

The shadow dropped into the room.

Guess you can drive about as well as you can fly, huh?

What the hell are you doing here? Visiting hours ended at six.

Well I didn’t fly two and a half thousand goddamn miles in ten hours to bring a weenie like you grapes. So grab your stuff and let’s get the hell out of here.

She stepped forward to see him.

Christ, she said. You look awful.

He tried to get up and cried out in pain. Pancho steadied him.

You’re gonna have to quit screaming like a girl if this is gonna work, she said. Leave the light off. We gotta move quick. It’s not gonna be long before some goddamn junior crewman on six hundred a year takes a nighttime walk and spots the scarlet marvel on his ground.

Harrison looked at her.

You got the plane
here
? he said.

You bet your sweet ass I do, Pancho said. It’s a goddamn air force base, ain’t it?

How did you even know I
was
here?

Got a call from an old friend, she said, pulling his arm over her shoulder. Was told to come pick you up. Jeez, you got any pants? Forget it, we ain’t got time.

Harrison hadn’t realized he was only dressed in a hospital gown.

Steady! he said as Pancho dragged him across the room. Jesus! I broke my goddamn ribs.

Quit your whining, she said. We don’t have long. Deke said he’d only be able to give us ten, fifteen minutes tops.

Deke?

Stand here, Pancho said. Don’t move.

She pulled his bedside table across the floor and shoved it under the window.

Think you can manage that? she said.

Maybe, he said. My side hurts pretty bad though.

C’mere, she said. Look.

She made a stirrup with her hands and hoisted him onto the table. He looked out the window.

Pancho, we’re two floors up.

There’s a ladder on your left, she said. You’d better be able to manage that.

He swung himself around, out, onto the ladder. He held his left side and lowered himself down. Pancho followed, giggling. At the bottom, she pulled the ladder down and laid it flat on the grass.

Where’s the Mystery Ship? he said.

C’mon! she said.

Pancho led him along the side of the hospital, over the road, between two buildings and against the wall of a hangar.

Damn, he said when he saw it. I’d forgotten what a beauty she is.

The Travel Air Type R Mystery Ship was a low-wing racing airplane, one of only five. Pancho had broken Earhart’s airspeed record in it, years before. The wings were thin, braced with wires, the fuselage sleek and streamlined.

Took me three years to fix it up after I won it back, she said. Felt good to get her up again. Now get in.

He got in.

Pancho looked at him and laughed hard.

What? he said from the front cockpit.

If it ain’t the funniest goddamn thing I ever seen! One of NASA’s world-famous
astronauts
sitting in his underwear in the back of a monoplane. I sure wish the boys could see this.

Hurry up, would you, before we get busted, he said. Plus I’m cold.

Pancho climbed in.

Fastest damn airplane in the world when I bought it, she said. Cost me a goddamn fortune.

Can we go?

All right, all right, keep your peckerwood on; we’re goin.

She started the engine. It stuttered and stalled.

Would it help if I got out and pushed? he said.

Quit bitchin, she said.

She fired the engine again and it rumbled and roared and she taxied toward the runway and took off.

Attagirl! she said, as it howled into the air.

The wind whipped through the thin wires and through his hair. He felt the pressure on his face as they rushed into it. He smiled. The engine hacked and spat and Pancho yelled, we got a problem, and Harrison yelled, what?

Outta gas, Pancho said.

Sweet Jesus, Harrison said. Some rescue.

The Mystery Ship dipped and bucked.

Didn’t figure on not being able to refuel at the base like normal, she said. Hang on, I know a few places round here.

They made it to a corn farm near Ocala and landed. Pancho said she and Telly, the farmer, went way back.

Far enough to have you bangin on his door in the middle of the night askin for gas? Harrison said.

Least the sonofabitch can do, Pancho said.

Telly appeared in the doorway in his underwear.

Telly, Jim; Jim, Telly, Pancho said. Jesus, am I the only one not standing around in my goddamn underwear tonight?

Telly kept his fuel by his barn. He had an old Stearman 17 he’d converted for crop-dusting.

You need food, water? Telly said as he refueled the Mystery Ship.

We’re good, Pancho said. Thanks.

Real pleasure, Telly said.

Come out to the desert sometime, Pancho said. Do some proper flyin.

Hell, I might just do that, he said. He laughed and waved them off.

They hopscotched cross-country, back to California. Pancho flew by dead reckoning, using a compass and Rand McNally road maps, stopping only to refuel at private airfields; nothing more than dirt strips with tin hangars. She gave Harrison a gallon of water and a bag of beef jerky and told him to be grateful. After the third stop, Harrison fell asleep. After the fourth stop the fuselage caught fire and Pancho brought the Mystery Ship down into the mesquite and jumped out to throw sand on the flames and took off again. Harrison stirred and said, what happened? and Pancho said, don’t worry your head about it, sleeping beauty.

They got back to Pancho’s in the middle of the afternoon, landing on her strip by the back barn.

Upstairs, Pancho said to Harrison.

Exhausted, with a blanket he’d found on the cockpit floor wrapped around him, he traipsed into the house and climbed the stairs. Pancho followed.

That’s your room, she said, pointing to a green door at the end of the landing. It’s all made up for you. Go to sleep. And no funny business. I don’t want you banging on my door in the middle of the night looking for hot sex. Tomorrow we’re making a goddamn plan.

You done being pissed at me?

I’m never gonna be done being pissed at you. But I just flew a solid day to bring your sorry ass home.

How’d you stay awake?

Who said I did?

Tuck me in?

Get the hell out of my sight.

MOJAVE DESERT
MUROC, CALIFORNIA
MARCH 1966

The next morning Pancho banged on his door early and fixed eggs and coffee for breakfast. After they’d eaten, she took out a pack of Pall Malls and lit one. She offered the pack to Harrison who took one and lit it with Pancho’s lighter and sat back and sipped his coffee. Pancho leaned forward and looked at him.

Good coffee, he said.

Here’s how this is gonna work, she said. As you know, Deke an I been talkin. You’re welcome to stay here for as long as you want. It’s your room. But there’s three conditions. First off, you help me out with the planes. Maintenance, repairs, refueling anyone who ties up; that kinda thing. Second, you see a NASA shrink. It won’t go on your record. Deke’s seen to that. Third, you give Deke a call when you feel right. Said he’ll give you a seat on the next available mission.

Harrison thought for a moment and said, okay.

Good, Pancho said, because the other option was to drive you out into the mountains and kick you out in your underwear. Speakin of which, there’s some clothes upstairs Billy Horner left behind, probably fit you. Landwirth is gonna get your stuff sent down from the Cape; out of his own pocket too, dumb bastard, so make sure you call him.

I will, he said.

I just thought of another rule, Pancho said.

Are you just gonna make them up as we go?

Rule number four: I don’t want to hear any of that crappy NASA jargon round here. I can’t stand it. You want to speak like a goddamn robot, you can do that in your room, on your own.

Should I be writin these down?

Rule number five.

Jesus!

Rule number five! Rule number five is no backtalk!

All right! All right!

Harrison got to work on the Mystery Ship, fixing her up after their long flight. He worked outside, hot wind blowing in his face, like it had always done. He’d forgotten how quiet the desert was. He worked alone, and would often have to sit for long periods in the hangar. Afterward, he’d go out and look at the sand and the sky then get back to work. His mind calmed a little. The ache in his side eased as his ribs healed. He wanted to ask Pancho about Grace. He’d not spoken to her for a long time. And Pancho had not mentioned her once.

He’d been back a couple of weeks when he had a phone call from the secretary of a Doctor Baum. Baum was a private psychiatrist NASA had employed while selecting the original Mercury astronauts. He worked a day a week at the Antelope Valley in Lancaster. Harrison would be seen then. They would review progress every two months. The first time they met, Harrison knew they weren’t going to get on. Baum looked like a tall glass of tonic with no gin, thin and serious and slightly bitter.

Harrison did not want to be at the Antelope either. It made him uncomfortable. Pancho drove him over every week, partly because rule number six was
no driving
and partly to make sure he actually got there on time. During their third session, Baum said, most of my patients
want
to be here, and Harrison said, really, he didn’t see the point. In the fourth session they talked about his mother and flying and Baum prescribed thioridazine, which the hospital’s pharmacy dispensed for him. He took them home in a brown paper bag and sat in the hangar and read the advisory notes on the bottle and he read each line over and over and he felt scared and sweated heavily. Then he swallowed one of the capsules and went outside and set the advisory notes on fire with a match. When it fell to the ground he stood on the burning paper and scooped up the black ashes and threw them into a water trough. Then he lit a cigarette and went back to work.

Apart from Pancho, the only people he spent any time with were the Walkers. He’d play with the kids, have a few beers with Joe, stay for dinner. Most nights, he turned in early. He stayed away from the Happy Bottom Riding Club and its regulars. There weren’t many he knew at the base now anyway; most had moved on or augered in. Ridley was in France, working for NATO’s Advisory Group for Aeronautical Research and Development. Yeager had returned to Edwards and was now commandant of the air force’s new Aerospace Research Pilot School, or ARPS, as it was known, designed to produce air force astronauts for both NASA selection and the air force’s own space aspirations. When word reached Yeager that Harrison was back, he stopped by the ranch and the two men sat outside the hangar with a beer and talked about the old days. As it happened, one of Yeager’s first students, an air force pilot named Dave Scott, had just taken his first spaceflight aboard Gemini VIII. I’ll be damned, Harrison said when he found out. He did one hell of a job. Yeager chuckled and said, feel like a proud father. They sat and talked for a long time.

One night, over dinner in Pancho’s kitchen, Harrison said, I hate goin up to the Antelope, and Baum’s an asshole. Pancho looked up from her plate and said, you forgotten our deal?

No, he said. But there must be someone else?

Pancho chewed her food.

I’ll look into it, she said. Eat your pie.

He ate his pie.

A week later Pancho said, I spoke to Deke; got you someone else.

You spoke to Deke?

Yeah, I spoke to Deke. And I got you someone else.

Who is he?

He’s a she, and she’s agreed to come out here every week, although God knows why anyone would want to talk to a miserable bastard like you.

A woman?

Thought you might like it. If you ask me she’s nuts herself but no one’s askin me.

Harrison stood up and hugged her and she recoiled and cursed him loudly.

He met with Doctor Louise Brubaker twice a week, in an old workshop Pancho had behind the barn. Doctor Brubaker’s husband, Ed Brubaker, had flown in Korea, chasing down MiGs up the Yalu River. She knew pilots.
I’m familiar with the breed
, is how she put it. It was a good start. As the weeks went on, their talks began to help.