Chapter 1 Goodbye, Texas
Life made sense when Tony was alone in the cockpit. He slowed the plane on approach. His gloved hand nudged the stick, he pressed the rudder pedal with his boot, and the plane banked. He cocked his head to follow the horizon. The plane leveled out, and he straightened his neck. The narrow airstrip centered in his windscreen had a single hangar at the far end.
The shadow of the plane passed over the boss’s pickup. It was racing up the dirt road that connected the airstrip to a singlewide mobile home. Seeing the pickup surprised Tony. Velma Lee had told him that R.J. wasn’t supposed to be back from Dallas until tonight. Tony tapped his shirt pocket, then remembered his pack of Kools on R.J.’s nightstand.
“Shit,” he muttered. He hoped Velma Lee had thrown them out with the vodka bottles and the Polaroids. He pushed those thoughts aside. He knew distractions and landings didn’t mix.
Tony picked out his touchdown spot. It was halfway down the airstrip, near the company sign that boasted: “R.J.’s Cropdusters, Beaumont, TX — Two planes to serve you better.” Only 10:00 a.m. and he had polished off the last load on a 600-acre rice job. That was almost $250. In 1972, at 28, that felt like getting rich. Should he get a new car? A round waterbed? At least some expensive booze. He brought the Weatherly in for a picture-perfect landing with the words to Satisfaction (and not getting any) drumming in his head.
The wheels of the low-winged monoplane kissed the ground. Landing was bittersweet. He liked doing it well. He hated returning to earth. The tailwheel touched down, the horizon disappeared behind the engine, and he began the familiar bumpy roll down the runway. The right rudder pedal wilted beneath his foot. No brake.
“Oh shit!”
Tony steered using the tailwheel while he had speed. The aircraft slowed, and he jabbed at the dead brake pedal over and over. The end of the runway approached in slow motion.
“Not the fucking hangar,” Tony groaned. The tin structure and the plane parked beside it grew larger.
Tony sucked on his dark, thick moustache with his lower lip and rolled on helplessly at five miles per hour. The plane was a breath away from the building and he was just along for the ride. The landing gear hit a small rut. The craft veered left. The wingtip snagged the corner of the hangar and turned the plane.
R.J.’s other plane sat dead ahead. Tony’s spinning prop chewed into the wing of the other plane with the noise and fury of a giant can opener. Tony listened and winced. Seconds later, finally at a standstill, he scowled at the pool of brake fluid on the cockpit floor. He unlatched his seat belt, and the clicking sound broke the menacing silence.
Tony popped open the canopy, pulled his long body out of the plane, and climbed out to stand on the wing. The pungent smell of gas hit his nose and crawled down his spine like electricity. Was there fire? It was always his first thought after a sudden stop. But there was no smoke, no open flame. The fumes rose from the severed gas tank in the shredded wing of the other plane.
He exhaled, snagged the helmet from his mop of black curls, and shielded his blue eyes from the sun. R.J. wouldn’t be happy. The curled propeller blades were tangled in the half-eaten wing of the other plane.
“These two are history,” he said. He wanted to brush it off or fix it. He couldn’t stand the sight of a plane that couldn’t fly.
Trembling spread through his body to his fingertips and toes. He threw his scuffed white helmet halfway to his ragtop ’67 Mercury Monterey. Twenty minutes ago, sulfur dust had swirled behind the single-seat Weatherly. The landing gear had skimmed over shuddering blades of rice. Tony had felt safe in the yellow plane, even flying fence-high at 100 mph.
R.J. always assigned the worst fields to Tony. The one he just finished had been a damn obstacle course. Trees, standpipes, a shed, barbed wire fence, power lines. For Tony’s first day on the job, R. J. had made him fly that field. Later, R. J. had slapped him on the back and called him “a pilot’s pilot.” R.J. had even admitted he couldn’t put the plane under the low wire on the south end. His boss probably wouldn’t remember that now. Tony just hoped he would remember that pranged aircraft were part of cropdusting.
Tony stood on the wing and looked back at the tangled mess. This would come out of his paycheck. Hell, it was an accident. The only thing that could make it worse would be if R.J. found out Tony was doing his wife. The sound of rubber squealing against asphalt made him look over his shoulder. The quick stop of R.J.’s pickup caused a cloud of dust to envelop Tony’s boss’s truck. R.J. threw open the driver’s door.
Maybe R.J. wouldn’t call the NTSB. Tony didn’t want to deal with the National Transportation and Safety Board again if he could avoid it. They could separate the two planes, and Tony would offer to work on the mangled wing for free, just to keep it all off his record. He raised his hand over his head, signaling to R.J. that he was OK. The next thing he knew, R.J. had a shotgun propped on the truck door’s open window. Both barrels were aimed at him.
Shotgun pellets peppered the fuselage. Holy shit! Tony jumped from the wing and ran behind the hangar. He kept his back pasted to the hot, corrugated tin building. Two seconds of silence prompted him to peek around the corner. He saw R.J. break open the weapon and empty a box of shells on the front seat of his pick-up. Damn, he was reloading.
“It was an accident, R.J.,” Tony yelled, venturing from behind the building, but not far. “Fluid leaked from the cylinder. I didn’t have any right brake.”
R.J. took aim again. Tony stepped back, spun around, and lunged behind the hangar just before R.J. started yelling.
“Bang my wife.” KA-BOOM! “Wreck both my planes.” KA-BOOM! “I’ll kill you, Tony Damascus.” KA-BOOM! KA-BOOM!
Tony dashed behind the conjoined planes, the blasts following him. He snagged his helmet from the ground and dove headfirst into the front seat of his car. The gear shift stabbed him in the ribs. Damn. A shot hit his windshield. Shit. Shit. Shit. He yanked off one glove and fought to remove his keys from his pants pocket. Another shot. He fumbled with his keys. His shaking hand struggled to make the key penetrate the ignition switch.
“Come on, come on,” Tony urged the key.
The key cooperated and Tony turned the ignition switch, pushing the accelerator pedal with his hand. He drove away, lying low. Roadside bushes scraped the car doors. He crossed the railroad tracks and sat up. Even then, R.J. blasted another round in his direction.
Tony turned left onto highway FM 1193, headed west. He didn’t look back. No need. The trunk of his faded yellow car held most of his possessions. Velma Lee would know he wasn’t coming tonight.
He would miss little things about her. The way she always came into that blistering hot hangar, wearing shorts and asking him if he wanted ice cream. Telling him she was lonely. Tony knew why, too. R.J. was always bragging about his other women when he was lining out the day’s work or while they waited for the wind to shift.
Texas, flat Texas, passed. Tony had trouble keeping his focus on the road. He had dealt with other jealous husbands, but the shotgun was a first. Worse than the knife in Mississippi. Worse than the pitchfork in Arkansas. Not as bad as the guy in Oklahoma, whose only comment was, “You’re welcome to her.”
Ten years ago, Tony had left California, escaping Jealous Husband #1, his foster father. He’d heard the old man was dead. It seemed as good a time as any to go back. His foster mother might still be alive. Well, fuck her if she couldn’t take a joke. Hell, he had, and, um, no, she couldn’t.
Four burgers, ten beers, and a whole goddamn day later, he took a whiz on the sign that said: “You are now leaving Texas.” He popped another brew to salute the “Welcome to New Mexico” sign. He did the same at the “Welcome to Arizona” sign before pulling into a roadside flophouse for the night. Tony stood in the narrow door of room 17 and stared across the empty parking lot, feeling too hot to sleep, too tired to drive. Would life always be like this?
He noticed a car pulling into a driveway across the road at twilight. A family emerged and headed into the house, Mom and Dad first. The kids bounced in behind them, looking happy to be home. Some people were lucky enough to go home.
He had heard his real dad say once that Tony had a brother somewhere, but he was pretty sure his father had been lying. The old man always had tried to sound like a real stud. Maybe that’s why Tony was such a fuck-up. Maybe things like that ran in families.
He grabbed the molding above the door jamb and stretched. Too many hours in the car. He rubbed his eyes, glanced down at the motel office, and stretched again. At least he had managed not to flirt with the proprietor’s wife when he registered. Twenty-four hours without touching another man’s wife. Not much of a record. He wasn’t good enough for a woman to want only him. So he had been told. So he believed. He looked over his shoulder at the empty bed and decided to call it a night.
Tony woke in the middle of the night, dreaming about Velma Lee. He couldn’t recall the dream, but he could remember lying in bed with her after sex. She would play with his little finger. He liked that about Velma Lee. She didn’t want to snuggle or get too close. She would just pick up his hand and bend his little finger back and forth. He had always tried to stiffen his finger, so she couldn’t move it. But no matter how hard he tried, she always could.
He had probably stayed with Velma Lee too long. Two or three weeks used to be enough with any woman. A month tops. Lately though, things had been different. For some reason, he wasn’t as interested in the chase as he used to be, and the thrill of getting caught was becoming more of a drag. Maybe it was age, although 28 wasn’t that old. At least he wasn’t 30. Tony kicked off the covers and rolled over, but it took him a while to go back to sleep.
Fourteen hours later, he stopped and bought three gallons of water and a 12-pack of Coors before crossing the California state line. He nursed the convertible’s tired engine across the desert with the water but saved the beer for himself. A real meal would have to wait until he landed a job.
Tony checked all the cropdusting hotspots in the state’s wide Central Valley—Needles, Buttonwillow, Tranquility, Firebaugh, Dos Palos. Each one told the same story. “Got all the pilots I need,” the boss would say. It was probably true, since climate in California offered year-round work. He turned west, passing through Los Banos and over the Pacheco Pass. He followed the setting sun, making stops in Hollister, Gilroy, and finally Watsonville near the Pacific Ocean. His rotten luck was holding. That night, he’d be sleeping in his car.
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