Test Flights

Harold had labored in the same job, the same diesel grime and oil, for thirty-six years. Today he would retire. His world for the past thirty-six years had consisted of a four-way intersection and the three buildings attached to that intersection, the Danderwood Apartments, C.S.W Engine Repair, and The Jasmine Moon Restaurant and Lounge. Harold’s thinning hair had assumed a bleached-out canary yellow tint about six years after he moved into the apartment building. His thick beard, while fiercely retaining some of its original strawberry blondness, had also taken on the same yellow hue. Engine grease and years of smoking had worked together to turn his teeth and skin nearly the same shade of gray.

Kitty-corner to his apartment was the construction company he worked for as a mechanic. Each morning he would wake, eat breakfast, and then cross the intersection to C.S.W. In the evening, he’d cross the same intersection to the Jasmine Moon where he’d sit on the sticky vinyl barstools and drink a few beers before heading back to his apartment to sleep.

Today he had followed the same pattern, but after his second beer memories crept up and entered his routine blankness. Humid memories with jungle smells and sounds sparked from somewhere deep in the back of his mind.

“Test pilots,” he said aloud.

“What? Did you say something Harold?” the bartender asked.

“Just remembering something I guess,” Harold said.

The bartender, a faceless face and empty meaningless voice in a long string of cookie cutter bartenders for Harold, turned back to the nearly empty lounge leaving Harold to his beer and cigarettes. This was the pattern when serving Harold. Even the chattiest bartenders tended to leave Harold alone.

Harold stuck to his end of the bargain not saying anything. He sipped his beer slowly and smoked each cigarette nearly to the butt, each movement slow like he was conserving time, but in his head barriers were slipping and the fragments of Hueys and the Viet Cong were coming through.

We’d dropped six hundred feet just after we cleared the mountain range. Now we were holding about three hundred feet above a small clearing in the jungle. Even with the rotors spin at full throttle the heat still bakes us. Below, in the clearing a muddy stream flows through so slow it looks like frozen coffee. Near the edge of the clearing where the elephant grass meets the bamboo and thick jungle growth a black water buffalo grazes, occasionally flicking it’s tail to raise a cloud of flies.

Harold came back. He raised his little finger to catch the bartender’s eye and another foamy beer was placed before him. His hand was sweating as he raised the beer to his lips and drank.

“Can you make Saigon Slingers?” Harold asked as the bartender wiped the bar in front of him.

“What?”

“Oh, it’s just something I used to drink a long time ago.”

“What’s in it? Maybe I can make it for you.”

“Huh, funny thing is I don’t remember now.”

Harold slipped back into the silence of his beer and thought about what he would do tomorrow. He rarely slept more than three hours a night. He’d always had his work to bury himself in. Tomorrow there would be no pattern to follow, only a blank new day awaited him. Even as he thought about his unknown future the past made its way back into his thoughts.

The helicopter’s engine stuttered a little as we hovered above the clearing. I’m not even supposed to be here. I’m a helicopter mechanic. The door gunner’s down with malaria, so I’m filling in today, the co-pilot ordered me to come along. There are two plain clothes civilians, CIA, I think, and a lieutenant from the Special Forces along with us. There sitting on the bench and I’m in the doorway aiming the Sixty at the clearing. On the floor, are two ARVNs, hog-tied. They’re just boys, barely teenagers. Me and the co-pilot were friends with them back at the base in Da Nang. We called them Daniel Boon and Davey Crockett. Someone gave them coonskin hats and they never took them off even in the worst heat. I know what they did, sold out a Special Forces Re-Con mission, but I don’t know what’s going to happen to them now. The mood in the Huey has been ugly and tense since we took off. I can see memories of the ambush all over Special Force’s face even though he hides it well. He stared down at the ARVNs during the entire flight and I’m pretty sure he’s the one who hog-tied them into pretzels.

“Ever been shot at?” Harold asked returning to the present.

“Uh, no Harold, I haven’t. What’s with you tonight? You never talk when you’re in here.”

“Dunno, guess I never have much to say usually.”

Harold thought about the bartender’s question, trying to come up with an explanation. He stared at the bartender’s hands, big hands, hairy knuckles, cracked skin around tips of the fingers. Then he thought about fingers, fingers blown off, fingers ground up in metal gears, fingers on triggers and wrapped around yellow throats.

Special Forces has got Daniel by the shirt collar now. Strange though, the shirt, white like a waiter’s with black slacks to match, not something you see often in the jungle. He’s screaming in the Daniel’s face, “Doo Ma May!” (fuck your mother), I think. His eyes are shining, grinning in fact; he’s looking at his CIA buddies. “Test Flight?” he asks. One of is buddies casually nods with his cold sunglasses. I watch Special Forces moving slowly, pulling a poker card from his back pocket. He wants Daniel to see it. He turns it in front of his face, first the black spade and then the back with the Fifth Special Forces insignia on it. He stuffs it in Daniel’s shirt and smiles again.

It’s fast, like he’s tossing a hay bale and Daniel is out the door of the Huey and headed towards the ground. There’s a shriek. I think it’s Daniel screaming as he swishes past me, but he’s already fallen too far for his death voice to rattle through the Huey like that. It’s Davey screaming. CIA’s holding his head up so he can see Daniel falling. Then the co-pilot comes out of the cockpit and yells in CIA’s face.

“What the fuck are you guys doing? You said you were going to interrogate them not execute them.”

A blur of hand and metal and suddenly Special Force’s .45 is under the co-pilot’s chin. I’m scared. Scared and pissed off, but what have I got? Nothing really, the Sixty, but I’d kill everybody if I let loose with it, a boot knife, but that would only take care of Special Forces. The CIA twins would probably get me and the co-pilot before we could stop them.

Then there’s some loud taps on the underside of the Huey like hard rain against sheet metal. Smoke from the tail drifts in and I can smell the burning hydraulic oil. Special Forces, all in one motion, lowers the .45 and shoves the co-pilot towards the cockpit, yelling “Climb!” No time to think, I’m back on the Sixty firing down at the green elephant grass at the small black dots firing AK-47s. Another scream, terrified sentences in Vietnamese, and then I realize they have lightened our passenger load by one again. Davey’s body hitting the ground stops the shooting for a moment, long enough for us to limp out of the fire zone.

I keep looking at the floor where Daniel and Davey were lying, looking for my friends. I remember them in downtown Da Nang, drinking whiskey and scoring French-Vietnamese hookers for us, but as we head back to the base floating over the mountains again, I clamp those memories tight, shove them deep into my head far behind other things in the present. I listen to the rotor and engine, and I count the bullet holes in the bottom of the Huey, making plans for repairs, setting my routine out before me.

“I didn’t really feel much after that.”

“What did you say Harold? You’re mumbling again.”

“I’ve been numb ever since. I made a routine and stuck to it for over thirty years. Just swallowed and buried it under all the hours and grease and gas fumes. Shit, how’d all that disappear?”

“I don’t know Harold, but maybe you’ve had enough tonight. Why don’t you go on home and get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Harold got up from the barstool stiffly, his hands hung at his sides as he walked toward the exit. He stopped for a moment half way to the exit. Indecision dug into his face.

“You can take vacations there now, Saigon, I mean Ho Chi Min City, that’s what they call it now.”

“Yeah, you don’t say. Well, goodnight Harold.”

“Yeah, goodnight,” Harold said softly and left the bar.