The Hummingbird (26 page)

“What do you mean?”

“You just seem so cagey right now. I want you to know that I am willing to listen to anything you want to say. Maybe I could help. Like with Gene.”

His shoulders lowered. The exuberance vanished. “Or the thunderstorm night,” he muttered.

“Exactly.”

Michael started away across the backyard, then turned. “It’s hard for me.”

“Perhaps if you just shared about one of the faces.”

“You really don’t know.”

“So tell me.” I followed him across the lawn, the sheets in my hand. “I recognize some of them now. The one with the squiggle next to him, the one in sunglasses. Yes, and here’s that dude with the mouse ears.”

“Ha.” One great peal came out from Michael, but it was icy cold. “Mouse ears? Honestly, Deb, you have no clue.”

“Then
give
me a clue. Who was he?”

He shook his head. “Nobody. No one.”

“Tell me, sweetheart.”

“You want to know?” he shouted. “You want to know?”

“Of course I do. And I want you to be free of it.”

“
Fuuuuck
.” Michael breathed hard several times through his nose, like a rhino deliberating when to charge. Then he slapped the papers in my hand. “OK. All right. Request granted.”

He fumed to the end of the lawn and back. He took another lap, glaring at me. I just stood there, arms crossed, waiting.

Eventually he came to the back stoop, where he pointed for me to sit. I went there, pressed against the screen door while Michael paced in front of me. I realized I was about to have my first real taste of his war. Seven months after he came home, and this would be the first.

“We were half a dozen miles southeast of Sadr City, heading to a planning session, not even on patrol. The nasties were using EFPs, a kind of homemade shell but instead of having a bullet shape after being fired, it goes flat. When it hits a Humvee, the hole is two feet wide.”

Michael wiped his forehead, drying his hand on a pant leg. “They nailed us from the right, on the passenger side but low. I sat back row on the left. Somehow no one was killed, but everyone had injuries, cuts and scrapes. Count that as one time an armored Humvee did its damn job. Gene, though, he was riding shotgun. His lower right leg was torn clear off, boot and all. We all piled out, dizzy from the blast and temporarily deaf, but mad as hornets. There was no one to shoot back at. We attended to Gene right away. I knotted the tourniquet myself. Everyone else either set a perimeter or loaded up in the caravan’s other vehicles.”

Michael glanced at me then, still pacing, his face pinched and pained.

“You don’t have to—”

“Don’t stop me Deb, now that you’ve started it.”

There are moments with every patient when you know, no matter how much you want to offer medical knowledge or personal comfort, that your task is to close your mouth. It’s not easy. Your ego asserts itself, your desire to help. But they need you to shut up.

I squatted forward, closer. “I’m listening, sweetheart.”

“I hate Iraq. The heat, the smell, the boredom. But the thing I hate most is the dogs. They’re everywhere, like pigeons in any U.S. city. Lurking, barking, sometimes you hear them fighting in an alley. Anyway, Gene’s loaded on the chopper and gone. Later a squad will come for the Humvee, drag it back to base for parts and demolition. Last thing before pulling out, I go back to make sure we aren’t leaving any gear behind. Ammo or whatever. The vehicle’s all bent doors and flat tires. Behind it there’s a dog though, some mutt of a street-thing, lapping away at a puddle. But this is Iraq, Deb, the giant sandbox. There are no puddles. I take a step closer, and sure enough, he’s drinking Gene’s blood.”

“Oh my God.”

“Just a dog, right? Doing its nasty doggy business. But I blasted that fucker, the impulse arrived and I obeyed it, no hesitation, no processing, just gave it the 30.06 at point-blank range.”

Michael took a huge inhale, but it came out in broken huffing. “The round just about cut the dog in two. Somehow, though, he didn’t die. Not right away. He yowled and tried to move. But his back was broken, along with a bunch of other stuff. His guts were out. I know I should have finished him. I didn’t, though. I left him there, writhing, because I knew. Any minute, another dog would be along to make supper out of him.”

Michael stopped pacing. He stepped past me to open the back door. “That’s ‘the dude with mouse ears.’ You can see why he’d be with me forever. Just a dog, but my conscience will carry him around till I’m dead.”

He shuffled into the house, moving like he was a hundred years old, pausing to speak through the screen. “Then again, Deb, when I left him to suffer like that, knowing he would get eaten any minute, I also learned a valuable lesson. Maybe the fundamental lesson of war.”

I stared at the pages between my feet, those scribbled faces. “And what is that?”

“There will always be another dog.”

BROOKINGS AIRPORT LIES ONE MILE
from the town center, north on highway 101. At an altitude of 459 feet above sea level, it offers two paved runways, each 2,900 feet long. The airport provides fuel service, military-grade lighting, and a beacon from sundown to sunrise.

Nineteen single-engine planes stand parked in tie-downs, plus four two-engine aircraft and one helicopter. The FAA call name for the airport is BOK.

For take-off limitations, one runway has redwoods 125 feet tall, located 2,900 feet beyond the tarmac’s end, therefore requiring an elevation slope ratio of 19:1. The other has 15-foot pines at a distance of 380 feet, for a lift ratio of 12:1. To the east lie the heavily treed mountains of the Siskiyou National Forest. To the west, the flat expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

According to his manifest filed for that day in May 1992, “Donny Baker III and passenger” arrived at BOK at 8:10
A.M.
Why did it take forty-five minutes to travel three miles from the Kerr home? No record accounts for that interval.

Piper Abbott had followed Donny’s truck. Thus she was equipped to report her observations and fill gaps in the narrative with interviews later that day.

The truck parked beside a single-engine plane, immaculate white with blue stripes down the sides. The wings spread above the cockpit, supported by struts down to the lower fuselage.

“This is a Cessna,” Donny explained to his passenger, who had eased himself down from the truck with the assistance of his myrtlewood cane. “These others are Pipers,” Donny waved down the row of aircraft. “Which is fine if that’s what you learned on.”

“Low wing,” Soga observed.

“Exactly,” Donny said. “They land easy as pie, but airborne you can’t see jack below you. The Cessna’s overhead wings let you take in the view.”

“Most excellent aircraft.”

“This one’s a 182. No big deal in the world of 747s, but around here a 182 means something.”

As Donny spoke, they circled the plane, Soga alternating between leaning on his walking stick and using it to point as though he were touring another bank.

“See,” Donny continued, pausing to pick a speck of something off the fuselage, “everybody from here to the Atlantic learned on a 172, it’s the classic trainer. But when you get your own, if you can afford that one step up, and buy the 182, it says something. You’ve arrived.”

The aircraft stood 29 feet long with a 36-foot wingspan—nearly identical to the E14 that Soga flew in 1942. It offered a top cruising speed of 145 miles per hour and, with a fuel tank in each wing, a range of 900 nautical miles. Donny’s habit was to refuel both tanks after every flight. That day, therefore, he could have comfortably flown to San Diego.

Soga was nodding as he listened. “Most excellent,” he repeated.

Donny hitched up his pants and took in the surrounding scene. Low morning light angled in over the trees, casting their shadows far down the tarmac. At that moment Piper Abbott photographed them—an unremarkable picture, two men beside an airplane, significant only in context and the length of their shadows.

Donny unlocked the passenger door. Soga stiffened, but Donny indicated a step on the strut that had a small traction strip. “Just put your foot there.”

Soga extended the arm holding his cane, like a wing, and Donny supported his elbow. It was the first time the two men had touched. The Japanese guest stepped on the footplate, rose even with the door, and plopped backward into the seat. He laughed, settling the cane in beside his leg. One wonders: Did it feel like a sword? Or like the passage of time?

“You are one plucky S.O.B., Soga,” Donny marveled. “I’ll give you that.”

He secured the passenger door, circled the plane to release the tie-downs, and climbed into the pilot seat. But instead of sitting back, Donny fidgeted. The door was pressing the holster into his side. He adjusted the seat back, shifted himself, wrestled with the strap inside his windbreaker. No luck—the grip dug just below his ribs. He tried sliding the holster forward, but the pistol wound up pointed straight at his crotch.

Finally he capitulated: “Aw, what the hell.” Reaching in, he undid the holster altogether and tugged it out. The pistol clunked against the cockpit floor. Donny squinted at Soga, who took a long appraisal of the gun, then returned to scanning the switches and dials.

“What do you make of that?” Donny asked.

“In my flight years, I too carried a weapon always. Against my left leg.”

Donny dropped the pistol in the cubby behind his fuel selector valve, on top of some pencils and a little notebook. As they each buckled in, he flicked switches, and the engine growled to life. Soga’s grin was visible from outside the aircraft.

“That’s right,” Donny said, putting on aviator sunglasses. “Ain’t a man alive doesn’t love that sound. Two hundred and thirty horses, climb rate better than nine hundred feet a minute.”

He slid on headphones and motioned for Soga to do the same. They idled while Donny reviewed his preflight checklist. “What do you think?” he asked.

Soga surveyed the cockpit, the instruments and indicators, and held his hands wide. “No stick.”

“This yoke here does the same thing.” He moved the wheel forward and back. “Elevators, yaw control. Pedals are the same too.”

As Soga nodded in understanding, Donny raised the idle and the plane began to roll. “There’s my six-pack,” he said, tapping a cluster of indicators. “But I bet you have no clue what that means. Do they even have them in Japan?”

“Six-packs?”

“It’s an indicator array, Soga. Look.” He tapped each of the dials with his fingertip, two rows of three. “Air speed, attitude, altimeter on top, then vertical speed, turn coordinator, and gyro—that’s like a super compass.”

Soga nodded. “Most excellent.” However, he stretched upward in his seat.

Donny noticed with a scowl. “Can you even see anything?”

Soga shook his head. “Six-pack is most excellent.”

“Hang on a damn second.” Donny applied the brakes and reached over between Soga’s legs. “Should have done this before you got in, but I didn’t figure you’d be shorter than my wife. Now hoist yourself up, if you can.” He pulled forward the seat crank. “Up, up, let’s go. I can’t lift you all by myself.”

Soga pulled on the overhead handle, straightening his legs till his bottom rose off the seat, while Donny turned the crank as high as it would go. “How’s that? Can you see over the dashboard now?”

“Excellent view,” Soga said, lowering himself. “Many trees.”

“You are high maintenance, buster,” Donny said, shaking his head.

They taxied to the runway with redwoods to clear. But that choice presented no difficulties: Donny goosed the throttles, the engine roared, and by the time they passed over the trees, the aircraft was well aloft and headed out to sea.

Donny Baker III kept meticulous flight logs. Papers he later filed indicate that initially they flew west. Then he chose a course of north-northwest, into the prevailing wind, following the coast.

That shoreline provides dramatic views as huge monoliths of stone rise from the sea. Soga leaned forward to peer out the window. From time to time he commented on some landmark, but Donny made no reply. Eventually they reached a stretch of shoreline where there were no houses, no settlements.

Without warning, Donny pulled the yoke to the left. At the same time, he stepped hard on the right rudder—not unlike deliberately making a car fishtail. The plane skidded in the air, loose items in back tumbling across the cabin.

With identical controls right in front of him, Soga knew precisely what was happening. The aircraft was in an intentional yaw, one set of controls making a left turn while another set banked to the right. But he did not protest, nor speak at all. He simply reached up and, to keep from falling out of his seat, he clasped the overhand handle with both hands.

Donny saw this reaction and reversed direction, the yoke pulled right and the left rudder pedal lowered. The Cessna shuddered and leaned, things sliding in back again. Soga held on as he was pinned against his door.

“Hell with it,” Donny growled, levelling off. “Never mind.”

At Gold Beach, Donny arced the 182 southward, putting Soga on the ocean side of the view. With a tailwind they made quick mileage. Donny increased their altitude, the altimeter dial slowly turning clockwise as they navigated eastward toward the Cape Blanco Lighthouse.

“They say you used that as a landmark.”

“Towns were all blackout. It was navigation beacon.”

Donny snorted. “Kind of defeats the blackout, right?”

“Mission was never about city or people. Was about forest.”

“I helped put your goddam fire out, you know.”

“Truly? Did not know that, sir.”

“Yeah,” Donny groused. “I led the team that found the site, put it out fast, showed the army who was boss of the woods, and got repaid with a friggin’ demotion. Plus they took my gun—and the bomb fragments I found.”

He maintained an eastward heading, continuing to climb. Soon they reached four thousand feet, pointing straight at Mount Emily. The timberlands provided a view entirely of green. Suddenly Donny shoved the wheel away, and the nose dropped. Both men rose against their seatbelts as the aircraft plummeted. Pencils flew out of the cubby. The pistol rattled in its place.

“Vertical speed?” Soga asked, tapping one indicator.

“Yup.” The needle had rushed from white into yellow, and was now pinned at the outer extreme of red—a loss of 1,500 feet per minute. A start at four thousand feet meant two minutes and forty seconds till impact.

As if in confirmation, the altimeter spun down counterclockwise. The attitude indicator showed a 30-degree rate of fall, and its bobbing globe, normally half white for sky, was all brown. In fact the view out the windshield revealed all forest and no sky. The Cessna plunged like a stone.

“What if we bought it right here?” Donny said. “Huh? What if I just augured us right the hell into Mount Emily?”

Thirty-three hundred feet. Three thousand. The plane was tilting over onto its right wing. The engine whined.

Soga placed a finger on the altimeter. Twenty-seven hundred. “Your daughter would feel the loss of you, sir, for many years.”

“Yeah, maybe. But what about you, mister bomber pilot? What if I just spread you all over this forest right now?”

Twenty-two hundred feet. Eighteen hundred. The dive was accelerating.

Soga bowed. “With respect, sir, I thought to die here fifty years ago.”

“Should I pull us out?”

Twelve hundred feet. The engine began overspeeding, revving on nothing as air rushed past the fuselage with a high shrill note. Both men’s ears began to ache.

“Maybe this was where everything was supposed to wind up,” Donny said. “Maybe we both got on this flight fifty years ago.”

Soga gripped his overhead handle again. “You have a great deal more to lose today than do I.”

“You mean Heather.”

Nine hundred feet.

“Also your wife and home. Also respectful community and prosperous life.”

Six hundred feet.

“Much loss in order to kill an old man who will not live long anyway.”

Four hundred. The Cessna was shaking from nose to tail.

“You clever bastard,” Donny said. “Check this out.”

He balanced the wings with his feet, then pulled the yoke hard against his belly. The nose began to curve away from the ground, and Donny jammed the throttle forward, the engine pulling them horizontal. The air speed indicator zoomed into red as they roared through the curve, passing two hundred miles an hour as the aircraft curved, and strained, and leveled off at four hundred feet.

The G forces of arresting the fall pinned both men hard in their seats. Outside, the sky came back into view. Soga pinched his nose and swallowed to ease the pressure in his ears.

“Yee-haw,” Donny yelled, slamming the dashboard with his hand. “What the hell do you make of that?”

“From thirty degrees of slope to level? At that speed? I have never flown an aircraft that could recover from such a dive.”

“What?” Donny laughed. “You thought we’d already bought it?”

Soga adjusted his eyeglasses. “Most excellent aircraft.”

“I should say the hell so,” Donny continued laughing. “But if you thought we were going to crash, why didn’t you grab the gun? You could have shot me and saved yourself. Or pointed the pistol and forced me to pull up.”

Soga shook his head. “Force is no longer my way.”

Donny pondered that as he navigated south, easing the throttle back, starting a fresh climb. For several miles, neither man spoke. Soga relaxed his grip on the handle. Soon they were droning down the coast again. Off the left wing, the northern edge of Brookings came into view. Donny banked eastward, inland. The ocean fell away behind them. The world below lay all in green.

“You know my daughter admires you,” he said at last.

Soga bowed his head. “As I admire her.”

“You and me, we’re old guys. From a different time.”

“With respect, sir, you are still young man.”

“Naw,” Donny said. “But look here.” He pointed. “That’s where you dropped those goddam bombs of yours.”