The Man Who Ate the 747 (6 page)

Wally climbed down and picked up the chunk. It was just the right size.

“This oughta do,” he said, holding up his prize.

“Good one,” Nate said.

Wally climbed the splintered ladder in the barn, hauled the panel up with a rope and pulley. Then he walked along the beams that ran the length of the structure. He knew every inch of this place, spent his childhood playing hide-and-seek in all its darkened corners.

“Here we go.”

He stared down into the huge contraption and saw
the metal teeth spinning at full speed, like a giant Osterizer. He put on his safety glasses, then pushed the metal piece into the mouth of the machine.

It moaned, shook violently, and suddenly went silent. The darn thing was always temperamental.

“Dammit!” Nate shouted.

Wally kicked the metal side of the device with his boot, tugged up and down on the piece of 747. Slowly the teeth began to grind, chewing up the offering. Acrid smoke spewed from the back of the apparatus.

The grinding noise was extraordinary, like a great beast dying. The abrasive sound shot out of the barn, over the two hills, past the windmill, and reverberated across all of Superior. It was a grating sound the town knew well, a sound everyone tried to ignore.

Wally swung down from the rafters on the pulley rope and waited patiently in front of the contraption. He checked his watch, and finally he flipped a switch on the front console. The grinding stopped. He pulled off his ear protectors and opened a little door built into the front panel and pulled out a red bucket.

It was filled with a metallic, gritty substance that smelled of auto shops and junkyards. He ran his thick hands through the hot ore. It felt good to the touch, not too thick, not too thin, just right.

He turned to Nate and said happily, “Time for lunch.”

It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, watching your best friend eat an airplane. Some days you suspected he wasn’t all there in the head. But then, on other days, he was the smartest, most insightful person you ever knew.

“Confucius was a corn inspector until age 16,” Wally liked to say. “It’s in
The Farmer’s Almanac.
So, the sky’s the limit.”

There was the time he wrote a letter to Cheerios announcing he had invented a new and improved super-glue. The inspiration for this claim had come from his daily struggle to wash dried-out cereal dregs from his bowl. This indestructible stuff—the kind he chipped away with a hammer and chisel—was far stronger than Elmer’s or Krazy Glue. To prove his point, he ground down a box of Cheerios, mixed the powder with water, and used the paste to build Arf’s doghouse without a single nail. It looked durable enough to him, but General Mills was unimpressed. The company didn’t even bother to write a proper rejection letter. Instead, it sent three coupons for free cereal.

Nate sat in the kitchen watching Wally make lunch.

“Rose dropped off some more articles for you,” Nate said. “Did you see the one about aluminum and Alzheimer’s?”

“It’s no big deal, just like all the others.”

“Rose sure worries about you. I see her every day after work when I go to the library. She’s always
looking for stuff on airplane eating—like seriously, how much is too much? Yesterday, she found an article in the
Journal of the American Medical Association.
Something about too much iron and heart attacks.”

“Yeah, but Doc says I’m iron deficient, so I don’t worry,” Wally said, standing over the stove, frying hamburgers.

Nate tossed the photocopies on the heap by the door. The pile of articles about the perils of ingesting metal had grown large over the years.

“Here we go,” Wally said, bringing two plates to the table. “Cheeseburger, onion, heavy on the tomato for you. Cheeseburger, onion, heavy on the air brakes for me.”

He picked up a bottle on the table filled with gray glop. “You sure you don’t want a little squirt today? Helps make you regular.”

“I’m already regular,” Nate said.

Wally examined his burger. He squeezed the bottle between bun and patty, and an ashen ooze seeped over the lettuce, onion, and tomato.

“You got too much on there,” Nate said with alarm.

“No way,” Wally said. “I never go too far with this stuff.”

He bit into the burger. His front teeth and bicuspids were as square and solid as most folks’ molars. Good for grinding. He chewed, then swallowed, reached for his glass of milk with its noticeably gray foam, gulped some down. He took a Tater Tot from
his plate with two pudgy fingers, dipped it in granular grayish ketchup.

“Remember what Mama used to say,” Wally said. “Everything in moderation.”

He chomped.

B
ehind all the lavender and lace, the Victorian Inn was neither Victorian nor an Inn, just a roadside motel with romantic aspirations. J.J. asked for the largest room and wasted no time getting into the shower. All he wanted to do was get the grit off him. Just a few hours in the country and he already felt coated with topsoil. Scrubbing as well as he could, he cursed the tiny washcloth and miniature bar of soap. Who were these made for? What size human could actually use them? An infant, a five-year-old, but surely not the average man.

He combed his wet hair and mapped out the mission in his mind. Suddenly the entire building shook. Then all was still. A few
moments later the room shuddered again. It was a hazard of motor inns. Big-rig trucks rattled rooms, and long ago he had gotten used to falling asleep with the rumbling of the 18-wheelers and headlights flashing through plastic curtains.

Then he heard another sound, instantly recognizable.

Boing. Boing. Boing.

It was the bugle call heralding his arrival, a sure sign that word was out.
The Book of Records
had come to town. He went to the window and peered down on the parking lot. Just what he expected.

Boing. Boing.

Dozens of kids of all ages bounced on pogo sticks, up and down, gazing at his window.

Boing …

“Mister!” one freckle-face said. “Check this out!”

Whatever country, whatever continent, as soon as they knew he was there, they always showed up. They wanted to be in The Book. They thought it was easy. With a jump rope or a yo-yo, they believed they could make history.

Boing. Boing. Boing.

He hated to smash their illusions. The blunt truth hurt. He opened the window and leaned out.

“I’m up to 234 jumps,” a boy with buckteeth called out.

“You’ve got a long way to go,” J.J. shouted back. “A man named Gary Stewart set the pogo stick record with 177,737 jumps in 24 hours.”

The kids kept bouncing.

“That’s 7,405 jumps an hour,” J.J. yelled, “123 a minute, more than 2 every second. All day and all night.”

Almost at once the parking lot went silent.

“There are plenty of other records you can try,” J.J. said.

The kids stood still for a moment, then took off down the street. They were heading straight for the public library. They always did. They would search for another record to break, then they would be back.

He unpacked his suitcase. He had brought along one week’s worth of clothes, nothing too spiffy except for the blazer. He put on a T-shirt, khakis, and sneakers. He stuffed a notepad in his back pocket, locked the room behind him, and went to the front desk.

“How’s your room, Mr. Smith?” the receptionist asked. “Comfortable enough? You’ve got 52 channels of cable in there.”

“It’s perfect,” he said.

“How can I help you?” she asked.

“Ms.—”

“Nutting. I’m Meg Nutting. What do you need?” Her face was dainty with a small pointy nose, and her pale thin neck looked ready to snap under the weight of a giant beehive of brown hair.

J.J. said, “I’m looking for information about the man eating the 747.”

“Oooh, I see,” Mrs. Nutting said. “Well, Wally pretty much sticks to himself. Let’s see, his best friend
is Mr. Schoof at the high school. Teaches science and math. Only other person who might help is Willa Wyatt at the newspaper.”

“Willa Wyatt,” he repeated, making a note on his pad.

Mrs. Nutting hesitated, then whispered, “Don’t be put off. That’s Willa.”

The first call came within minutes of the stranger’s arrival at the Hereford Inn. A man in a Taurus with Omaha plates, asking questions about the 747. Then another phone call. In no time all three lines were blinking in the newsroom.

Willa Wyatt leaned back in her chair. She knew it was bound to happen. Sooner or later someone would come snooping around. The story would break, and even though newspaper ink ran in her veins, she didn’t like it one bit.

She closed her eyes and pushed her fingers through her sandy blond hair, braided it quickly, tying it off with an old rubber band. She took a deep breath, savoring the smell of the presses. Some of her friends preferred the scent of flowers, others the aroma of baking, but Willa loved the smell of newsprint. She kicked her legs up on the desk, where she sat as a girl, watching her father put out
The Express.
He wrote the articles, developed the pictures, pasted up the pages, operated the presses, and delivered the papers.

It was the world made fresh once a week, brought
right to people’s doorsteps. A noble calling, her father used to say. Even though there were bigger dailies out there beyond Nuckolls County, they couldn’t compete on what mattered most. If you got too big, he said, you lost touch with your readers.

Willa studied the picture of her father on the desk. Behind the wire-rimmed glasses, his features were sharp. Square chin, black hair, brown eyes. He was sitting on the tailgate of a green 1967 Ford, bundles of newspapers behind him. It was the same truck she still used to run the papers around town. No point getting a new one, her father said.

A few years back her father decided it was time to retire. It was earlier than for most men his age, but he wanted to take a whack at his memoirs, maybe even learn to paint, and, best of all, spend more time with his wife, Mae. It was hard, but he finally handed over the keys to the Superior Publishing Company. Now he spent most days listening to the Royals on the radio, scribbling on his legal pads, or going on country adventures with Mae. Once in a while, at dinner, he would say something about the layout or the coverage. All in all, she knew he liked what she had done with
The Express.

She, too, was proud of the little paper. It was only 16 pages most weeks, sometimes down to eight if there weren’t enough ads, but it had won some regional awards. She tapped the computer keyboard to scroll through the wires, scanning the international datelines. There was never really any question that she would take over for her father, but what would have
happened if she’d gone to work for the
Omaha World-Herald
or the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch?
She would have ended up living overseas as a foreign correspondent, with an expense account, great clothes, exotic food, and worldly men. She envied the cool and stylish women on TV who covered war and famine without messing up their hair. Maybe some day … Then again, maybe not.

“No news is
not
good news,” her father liked to say. On this day, there wasn’t much to write about at all. The Grasshoppers—the Little League team she coached three nights a week—were going to the state championships, but if she wrote another column inch about their exploits, there would surely be an uprising.

The farmers were in the fields, planting soybeans and corn for the fall. The county weed superintendent had found severe infestations of musk thistle, one of six weeds officially declared “noxious” by the State of Nebraska. A perennial favorite on page one.

There was only one small scandal worth exploring. The town mortician, Burl Grimes, had just been elected chairman of the hospital board. A few old folks were grumbling it was a conflict of interest, running the hospital
and
the funeral home at the same time. “Out one door, in the other,” someone had said.

Willa reached for the phone. She would ask old Burl a few tough questions, piss him off, maybe even lose his business for the paper.

So be it.

The intercom buzzed. Willa turned down the farm news coming over the radio. She heard Iola’s mischievous voice: “There’s a guy out here to see you.”

“Who is it?” she said.

“Fella from
The Book of Records.
Wants to visit with you.” Then she whispered: “He’s kinda cute.”

“Send him back,” Willa said.

She knew the type. A stranger, just passing through. There were plenty of salesmen and hucksters on the back roads, looking for an angle. They told stories of the world beyond. They promised a way out. Once, long ago, she fell for a sweet-talking man who sold leather-bound books. He knew the difference between Yeats and Keats, recited lines from
The Iliad
in Greek, had traveled to faraway places. She gave away her beating heart. Then one day Mr. Odysseus went off to deliver an order of books and never came back.