Chickenhawk: Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

I am building a model airplane, a World War I Spad. A plastic Spad from a kit. It is three-thirty in the morning. Patience and Jack went to bed six hours ago. My tongue peeks out my mouth as I concentrate. I’m sticking pieces of cellophane onto the wings to create the effect of wrinkled fabric. My model is extremely detailed, but I left the little pilot head-and-shoulder figure in the box. The cockpit is empty. I rub silver paint on the tiny instrument panel.

While the Spad dries, I look at my photographs on the wall. They look dismal to me. Sad attempts to see the world as I once saw it. Patience picks flowers, wind blowing her hair. The gate to the old farmhouse swings as a blur, nobody there. The ghost second lieutenant is talking on his radio, full of plans. They are good, these photographs, but disturbing. I get up from the table and walk down the hall. Jack, bathed in moonlight, is tiny, his little chest breathing. Patience is beautiful; long dark hair hiding the pillow, she sprawls, taking up most of the bed. They are peaceful.

By four, the Spad’s war-worn paint job is dry. I hold it and strafe the salt and pepper shakers. I’m aware that I am a grown man playing with a model airplane and that I don’t make model airplanes. But it is a nice model. I take it to the corner cupboard and set it on a shelf. I stand back and admire my work, knowing I’ll never do it again.

I open the cupboard to put the box of tools and glue and paint away. The top shelf is packed with bottles of bourbon my students have been giving me when they complete their cycles. Four students per cycle, one cycle every two months; lots of booze. Don’t drink now. Drank some in Vietnam. Remembered how it tasted: warm canteen water and Old Granddad in a canteen cup, laughing friends. Good. Pull Old Granddad from the shelf and put him on the table. Get glass. Pour in three fingers of Old Granddad. Splash in water at the sink. Drink. Asleep beside Patience by four-thirty.

Flying in from the boonies with my last student of the day, I saw that a long grassy meadow we used for autorotation practice was clear. We were at cruising altitude, five hundred feet, and my student was concentrating on getting himself into the traffic jam of returning helicopters without hitting anyone—the last thing he needed was to have the engine quit. I rolled off the throttle, cutting the power.

The strip was to our right, the wind was coming from the right, so the student bottomed the pitch and turned to the right. I still didn’t know for sure if he saw the strip, but he was doing everything okay so far. He did a few shallow turns on approach to lose altitude to get on the right glide angle, and I saw he knew where he was going. I decided to let him take it all the way to the ground—a rare treat because the brass said we were breaking too many helicopters teaching pilots how to autorotate to the ground. Something flickered in my peripheral vision. I looked. A Hiller was coming down on us.

I take the controls, telling the student I’ve got it. In a very strange way, I don’t exactly mind this. Everything is happening in slow motion. It reminds me of the feelings I used to have during the assault landings. It is instantly obvious to me that there is no way to escape collision, but I want to be flying when I die. We’re both autorotating to the same spot. The other Hiller is so close that if I try to get away my rotors will tilt up into his skids when I turn. He’d lose a skid; we’d lose our rotors. Can’t go down any faster; we are both descending as fast as possible—we are both autorotating. His ship descends just a little faster than ours. We will hit soon. It is almost funny: Make it through Vietnam; killed in a peaceful meadow just outside Mineral Wells, Texas. One wrong move.

We’re a little off course for the strip. The student in the ship above us turns slightly to correct and sees our rotors just below him. At about a hundred and fifty feet, his ship lurches away and we are safe. Total time for event: about ten seconds.

I come to a hover on the strip. My student is pale and pissed. Why didn’t they clear themselves before they started their autorotation? I ask if he’d seen them. No. Good lesson, then, on keeping better lookout. He stares at me, nodding slightly.

It made a good story to tell my fellow instructor pilots back at the flight room. I jazzed it up with gestures and smiles, to make sure everybody knew I was scared shitless. They laughed. Been there, Bob.

It was Friday, so I decided to take both my flight suits home to wash. Grabbing my alternate flight suit that had been hanging in my locker for two weeks, I felt a bulge in one of the leg pockets. Zipped it open and found a thumb-sized barrel cactus wrapped in a slip of paper from my grade book. Ah, that was from that confined area on top of that hill toward Palo Pinto, I thought. I marveled at the plant, healthy and happy even in a stinking pocket. I took it home for Patience.