By Air Mail Ch.06

"No you don't," Terry laughed, "Don't hand me that."

But Hunter just chuckled, "What I was going to say was that I keep it for those times in the winter when I gotta sit and wait. I wasn't talking about now."

By the time that they got the fire going a little, all of the mosquitoes in Comanche County had found them - and called all of their hungry relations over. Hunter seemed to be able to abide them somehow, just as he often did when they were out someplace together, but they were driving Terry a little nuts.

"I thought you told me that you were from a little place that had these bugs too," Hunter said as he looked over, "You keep asking and I keep telling you that the more fuss you make by swatting them before they're even on you just aggravates the little bastards more. My big secret is to just keep still and they all head over to you since you seem to inspire them by giving them a challenge."

He shrugged, "Maybe they 're partial to white meat, I dunno."

"You're full of it, Hunter," Terry grinned, "The way that I see it is that there's no breeze or wind at all tonight to keep them off us - and unless that happens, I'm gonna sit and eat in the truck so you can stay here and test your theory."

In the truck together that night, they'd shared what they had to eat and drink before they spoke about what to do once the war was over.

Terry had spoken of a pair of girls and a guy that he knew well - even explaining the slightly odd relationship that he had with them. Hunter just said that he had no one and that there was no one that he wanted particularly at the moment. "This war just has to end someday," he'd said, "When that happens, they're not going to be needing as many instructor pilots and without a war on, they'll need a lot fewer people like me.

And I don't want to have to go back to just being a wrench for my uncle who gets his money cash under the table. That's why I'm trying to think ahead if I can."

"What I'd really like," Terry said, "is for the army to decide that 380's gotten a little too expensive, maintenance-wise for the maybe two hours that she spends in the air every month. If they'd write her off and I could only find a way, I'd love to buy her and see what sort of business I could think up."

"They already have decided that," Hunter said, "I know it from talking to the maintenance sergeant and his boss the captain. They've had a request in for five new ones, knowing that they might get just two if they're lucky. I also know that at least a part of that request has been signed off - at least the part that needs signing here at the base. Who knows if and when the rest will happen.

But you know that they won't sell it to a serviceman. They'll scrap her out to the highest bidder. I've seen them do that before with some of the old fixed wing planes and they do that right here, not like most places where they fly the old planes over and then leave them for the scrapper to cut up and sell for the metal.

I can use some of my uncle's hangar over at the regional field south of town and I could set up a salvage company so that I could bid on 380 if they shake her loose, but I'm not a pilot and I'd need some money to bid with, more than I've got, anyway. I won't have enough to bid on even one after I lay out the green for the business."

Terry thought about his grandmother and decided to ask if he could before they just got up and moved their sleeping bags into the back of the truck and before long - after waiting a little while to listen for and then hunt down the few mosquitoes who'd managed to sneak in while the doors were open, they tried to get some sleep.

Terry heard Hunter as he fooled with himself inside the sleeping bag.

"Are you doing what I think you are?" Terry snickered.

"Hell yes," Hunter admitted, "Listening to you talk and thinking about women ... I just know I'm gonna have a time falling asleep if I don't do something. Go ahead and tell me that you never need to help yourself, so I can say that you're not human. I won't have a friend who's a machine."

Terry began then and soon, he was annoyed with the limited range of motion possible inside a zipped-up sleeping bag. Hunter agreed and pretty soon they'd solved the trouble by opening the bags up since it was pitch black in the truck anyway.

"You know this is stupid," Hunter groaned, "the pair of us doing this like we were kids who'd just discovered that we could. Doesn't it feel dumb to you?"

"Maybe it does," Terry said quietly, "But I've got an idea to maybe make it a little better. Hold still."

Hunter didn't know what Terry was on about, but he got a clue in a few seconds as he felt Terry's hand and it felt far better than just using his own. But friends are friends, he decided.

"You want me to do the same to you so we're helping each other?" he asked.

To his surprise, Terry said no very quietly and then Hunter heard him move a little.

Right after that, he felt warm wetness and sagged down as though helpless all of a sudden. "God, that's good," he whispered, "Why, Terry?"

Terry stopped for a moment, "You're my best friend out here and that means by definition, you can't be an idiot."

"Why - what?" Hunter groaned.

Terry kissed the tip of Hunter's hardness out of just wanting to and he said, "Because only an idiot would find something to complain about if I try to do something good for him."

It changed things between them ever so slightly, but only until Terry's efforts had brought Hunter off.

Friends are friends, he told himself again so he did the same for Terry and after that, they had something else to share between them before they fell asleep.

As it happened, they woke up just in time the next morning, maybe ten minutes before the colonel showed up. When he walked through the trees, Terry showed him the short grooves in the sand and told the CO his guess, noting that if Peterssen had flown over the trees behind them, he'd have left long, deeper grooves and likely a damaged airframe.

"If he really had come in the way that he said, he'd have hit the lake for sure and been dead. Helicopters, if they're going to beat themselves to death, do a really bad job of it in water," Terry observed.

The colonel nodded and asked if Terry thought that he could get 380 into the air from there.

Terry nodded, "Yeah, I reckon I could. But a lot depends on that very temperamental girl stuck in the sand right there."

As it turned out, 380 didn't much like sitting in the sand at the water's edge and she started rather easily. Once she was a little warm, Terry strapped in and began to try to get her to lift in little stages, even rocking her back and forth using the cyclic pitch to alternate having her weight on first the back wheel and then the front while using the main gear as the pivot point. Every so often, he pulled a little collective pitch as he rolled on a bit of throttle. 380 got the hint and began to free herself from the sucking soft sand.

When he finally had her free, lifting up to hold it in a four foot hover, he grinned over at the colonel, who smiled back before he motioned Terry to head off, hoping that the rest was just a short flight to the hangar, since it would save him from having to dream up an even longer essay explaining things.

Terry flew back to the base with a smile on his face, liking this one bird even more for some reason that sunny morning and he got there well in time to still scrounge two late breakfasts out of the mess hall cooks, holding one in reserve for when Hunter showed up .

Terry managed to reach his grandmother Eunice by telephone not long afterward and she wired him the money that he said he'd need to make a start. As soon as they could, Terry and Hunter formed a business partnership.

Not two months later, the war ended and all of America was jubilant. Terry might have been more willing to celebrate along with everybody else, but he'd gotten the word that his grandmother had died suddenly, so that cast a pall over everything for him.

As everyone had been celebrating the end of the war, Terry had been alone. He'd wanted it that way because he needed to mourn and to remember everything about his grandmother and what she'd done for all of them. The day that peace had been announced, he'd been sitting alone, writing a letter home while lying on his bunk when he'd been given the bad news.

With the war obviously winding down lately, he'd been hopeful to return to his small family. His first thought after the shock had passed was to try to reach Molly to find out what he could.

He looked at the row of overworked payphones where he was and doubted that he'd be able to get through for days.

An infantry master sergeant found him leaning against the wall, about the only person in the outfit with a long face. When he'd heard what lay behind it, he'd taken Terry into the orderly room offices and sat him down, pushing a phone over to him. "Make your call Terry," the senior NCO said, "Nobody around here will even question me for suggesting this.

I'll keep everybody away and I'll tell the colonel if I see him so that he doesn't give you what for without knowing that I've done this and why."

Terry never forgot how hard it was to get through America's overloaded telephone system that evening. It took him over an hour before he heard the correct phone ringing. He'd given up trying to make a straight call.

He dialled 'O' and told the operator that it was an emergency. She'd told him that everybody had told her that since noon. Finally, he'd sighed, desperate now to get through.

"Ma'am, I don't care if you believe me, but while everybody's celebrating, I've just been given the news that my grandmother has passed on. I need to get through to my younger sister, so if it's not too much trouble, I'd like to place a collect call to Eunice Hatchett's phone over in Renfroe, Alabama. It's just a little west of Talledega."

She asked him if he knew the exchange number and he gave her the whole telephone number also explaining that the line was his dead grandmother's but that since she was dead, he hoped to speak to one of his sisters or his brother.

There was a pause after he'd wound down and the operator, who was a southern girl herself, asked if he was joking after hearing the name and he told her no, that the name that he'd given her was correct.

The phone rang five times before Terry heard his sister's shaky voice. He knew that he wouldn't be able to speak to her until she accepted the charges.

"Hello?"

"Good evening Miss, this is the long distance operator. Is this the Hatchett residence?"

There was a pause and then Terry heard her voice more clearly, sounding rough from weeping and terribly uncertain. "Yes, Ma'am," she said, "Only if this call is for Eunice Hatchett, she's passed away a half a week ago now."

The operator said, "I'm truly sorry to call you in your time of grief, but I have a collect call waiting from a Mister Terry Hatchett for a Miss Molly ..."

"That's me," Molly began before she hesitated, "I mean, ... this is she."

Terry thought that he could hear the smile in the operator's voice and for the thousandth time, he wondered why his grandmother had been insistent to name Molly the way that she had. He didn't care personally, but ...

"So you are Molly Hatchett?"

"Yes Ma'am," Molly said softly, "I surely am. May I speak to Terry please?"

"Will you accept the charges, Molly?" the operator asked, obviously trying to hold back whatever humor the mental image evoked of a murderous prostitute as a folk tale.

"Yes Ma'am," Molly said and they were connected.

Molly burst into tears as soon as she heard Terry's voice. He'd almost started to cry himself, but he waited for her to ease up a little and they began to make the first of their plans.

It would have taken Terry a month to be discharged, but due to his circumstances he was let go in less than a week. He walked out of the door with his belongings stowed in two olive-drab heavy canvas grips straight over to Hunter's own one-ton panel truck. As he tossed his bags in the back and climbed in, Hunter welcomed him back to civilian life and told him what he'd heard through the grapevine.

"There's a place in Idaho where they need someone to deliver the mail. From what I've heard, it's really rough out there, all mountains and lakes and like that. Sounds to me like the perfect place for a helicopter."

A month later, Hunter was able to bid on 380 when she was taken off-strength at the base. Terry was there, but he stayed in the background. It worked out even better by the end of the day.

380 was a Sikorsky R-6, but that type wasn't the first that had been flown there. There were still a few of the previous R-4s in service and aside from one that was kept mostly as the CO's hack and for running errands around, there were two up for bids that day alongside 380. One was sold off as scrap and the other was flyable.

For just under seven thousand dollars, the two partners were able to buy them all, the scrap one intended to be a parts donor to the working one and one after another over three trips, they were all loaded up on the big old heavyweight flatbed trailer that Hunter's uncle used to haul scrap aircraft with and taken the four miles to the other airfield where they set about getting the working ones registered.

And it hadn't been easy, either.

An inspector had come out from the FAA to look the birds over and he shook his head, "I can't register these," he told them both, "There are no civilly registered helicopters in all of the United States at the moment."

"What's the problem?" Hunter asked, "We've got all the paperwork and Terry is a helicopter pilot. He's flown both of them."

"Can't," the man said, "No precedents. I'm not gonna sign my name to the first ones."

Terry produced a letter of recommendation written and singed by the designer of both of the types of helicopter that they now wanted registered. "Hellfire man, look here. Igor Sikorsky himself signed this."

But the inspector wasn't moved and refused.

"Well," Terry had smiled, "while you're dithering about it, there are over a hundred of these flying for the army and the navy as well, and they've shipped a bunch to Britain, too. How many examples do you need?"

"I'm not dithering," the inspector said with a tone of annoyance in his voice, "I flat-out won't do it."

"Yes you will," Terry grinned, "You just change the paperwork to read 'EXPERIMENTAL' or we'll file a complaint - along with the owner of this hangar for other times when you've held things up out of what you said was your not wanting to appear hasty. If you'd been around at Kitty Hawk back in 03, the Wright brothers would still be bicycle mechanics and we'd have lost the war a long time ago."

As the now-angry civil servant began to make his changes, he asked what the experimental rating would get them and Terry told the man to mind his business because there's be no rules or laws broken.

When the man had driven off, Hunter wanted to know the same thing.

Terry just smiled, "Sooner or later - and likely any day now, Mr. Sikorsky or another guy who makes helicopters will sell one to a civil buyer and somebody other than a man who wants to do the safe thing for his pension will approve it. It's just gotta happen, Hunter.

The day after that, we'll file again and make sure that we get a different inspector."

That took a little time to happen, though it did, just as Terry had predicted.

When the time came for the last of the Hatchetts to leave their ancestral home, Molly hadn't given it a thought. She'd brought the immigrant pair with her on her journey to rejoin Terry since to them both, Judith and Isaiah were their siblings and it had all been planned since Christ was a corporal. Ruthie came along as something of a last-minute change of plans because Tom had finally come to a very reluctant decision and asked Molly to mention his granddaughter to Terry when they made plans over the telephone.

It had come as a huge relief to all of them, because until then, old Tom had been adamant that Ruthie remain with him. Somewhat true to form for her, Ruthie had reminded Tom that she was of an age where she could make her own decisions, and he'd said that she could go on ahead, but without anything from him.

When Molly mentioned it, Terry had said that it was an unfortunate way to go for the hard feelings caused, but if Ruthie really wanted to come along, he'd find money to give her a head start somehow. Molly signalled her approval by weeping in relief over the long-distance line and it was a done deal.

For his part, Terry doubted that he'd ever forget the way that it had gone. Seeing Molly as she stepped off the train, looking as though she knew what she was doing, he'd felt his heart swell. But if there was anyone who knew her really well, it was him - and he saw that she was filled with uncertainty and doubts which couldn't be helped.

He saw her get down and look back as first Judith and then Isaiah followed her, both of them clearly out of their element, a trio of young people far from home on their first time away and all of them knowing that they could never go back.

But Judith saw Terry then and everything changed once he stood with them holding him because they needed to for only a moment until they remembered what they assumed was their place - even here, hundreds of miles from those places.

But they'd all wanted to leave as the last of the Hatchett fortune was dissolved, despite the knowledge that it would take them out of their element.

Terry took Molly in his arms and just held her for a moment as she'd kissed his cheek softly, whispering that she loved him so and how happy that she was to be with him at last.

To Terry, Molly was somebody who was more like the compliment to him in so many ways. Sometimes, other people seemed to think that they knew each other' thoughts, though really, it came from being who they'd always been to each other.

She could be soft-spoken when she thought that it was what the situation required of her, but oftentimes one could see that the girl wasn't without a sharp mind. As he put his arms around her again, closing his eyes at how it felt to hold her to him after over two years away, he inhaled and smelled her soft scent and it reminded him of yellow jasmine blossoms smelled on the night breeze from a distance.

As he held Molly, Terry could still remember going upstairs one evening as a boy to look in on her since had been down with a fever and chills for a few days. He found her in her bed with Eunice sitting beside her and brushing her long hair for her and it was the first time in a few days that he'd seen her smile.

The soft smile on that particular nine year-old girl was something that Terry had held inside of himself forever.

"What's got you both grinning and laughing?" he'd asked and it set them off again, though it made him feel a little funny and nervous, the way that they were looking at him.

"We've been playing a girl's game that I used to play back when I was one and didn't really have a care in the world," his grandmother said, "My cousins and I would sit for hours with our friends, telling each other features about our true loves - who were expected to make their appearance at the correct time in our lives.

But there were always a few who liked a boy even then when we were all just young'uns. Those were always the most entertaining for us all, since we knew that they were telling of some of the features or habits of the boy they liked. Well since we more than likely knew the boys they were mooning over, we had to guess who it was, though only a fool of a girl would ever tell.

Terry," she smiled, "I'd imagine that a boy sitting in that room would about want to throw up - or shoot himself -just to hear the end of it, but it kept a passle of girls entertained forever.