The Floatplane Notebooks Read online

  I asked him later about the lake being at sea level and he said all water has to be at sea level. You can’t tell him nothing.

  BLISS

  Mr. Copeland was explaining about a company in Michigan that modified chain-saw engines for use on airplanes when Uncle Hawk stood and said, “I got to feed the dogs. Who wants to come?”

  I can’t get over the importance of dogs to this family.

  Mr. Copeland, Meredith, and Mark went along and Thatcher reluctantly followed, wanting to be with me, I firmly believe, yet not wanting, I suppose, to be the only man left inside among several women.

  They went out the back door. I momentarily harbored the thought of going with Thatcher out into the night to feed the dogs, but relinquished it.

  “Well, how about you, Bliss?” says Aunt Sybil, turning to me. “Where did you get a lovely name like that?”

  “It was my grandmother’s name. She died before I was born.”

  “I think it’s wonderful to keep names in the family. We named Lee after my sister, who had died a year to the day before Lee was born. Poor thing had a stroke and there is not the slightest history of stroke in the family. When’s the wedding?”

  “Next spring. May fifth. The day after the gravecleaning. Mr. Copeland suggested that—so you and Uncle Hawk would be up there too.”

  “Well, that’s just wonderful. Thatcher is such a nice young man. And I’ve been watching him grow up since he weren’t bigger than nothing.”

  In the back door comes all the men with the addition of a Dan Braddock, whom I had heard some talk about, but whom I had yet to meet. I knew he was Uncle Hawk’s partner at the store, but wasn’t around too much because of his other businesses.

  They came in and Uncle Hawk pulled in another chair from the dining room. Dan Braddock hugged a few necks, took a seat, and went into talking about his business. His appearance was singular. Most noticeable was his belt being extraordinarily high, with the main portion of his stomach below his belt buckle. He had a big, fat, red face, a Stetson hat, which he did not remove, but instead pushed back on his head. He had this noticeable manner of looking around at everybody without ever lighting down on one person. He went into talking about “the old days” and started using curse words and told about cheating the town of Lubbock, Texas, out of four thousand dollars on a land deal and about how he wanted to get into the real estate business full time.

  Miss Esther suddenly stands up and says she wants to go on back to get ready for bed. I also stood, knowing the language was getting too rough for my ears. Then Miss Esther told Mark he ought to go out and get ready for bed. Mark looked at Meredith, Meredith looked at his mother, Mildred, and said, “I want to stay.”

  “Am I talking too strong for the kids?” asked Mr. Braddock.

  I myself certainly thought so.

  “Yes, I suppose. A little, I think,” said Miss Esther.

  “It’s too bad Thomas didn’t live through the war,” Mr. Braddock said to Miss Esther. “You’d a had to get used to it.”

  “Thomas never cheated nobody, Dan, and if he did he didn’t laugh about it.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Braddock, “I understand he might have cheated somebody.”

  Miss Esther didn’t say anything. She stood there staring at him for about five or ten seconds and then walked on into the bedroom.

  As I departed, I noticed that Mr. Braddock’s eyes were darting around the room looking at everybody, and as I walked into the bedroom, Miss Esther called out to Mark to go on out and get ready to go to bed. “Now,” she said.

  I then prepared for bed, hoping I would sleep well in strange circumstances.

  I felt it would be appropriate to say something because Miss Esther seemed a little… I suppose flustered is the best word. So I said, “Your family is very interesting.”

  “They are. They are,” she replied. “Hawk’s always been as good as he could be. Giving people things. Taking on Dan like he did, as a business partner, and then Dan turning out like he did.” As she turned back her sheet I noticed her hand was shaking.

  I turned back the sheet on my rollaway bed. “Your husband was named Thomas?”

  “Yes. Thomas Carl… Thomas Carl Oakley.”

  Next morning was Silver Springs—and it was all I had dreamed and more.

  The glass-bottom boats were exquisite. What a sight looking down into those underwater caverns! What exquisite underwater scenery! And just as was promised, the guide, upon encountering a school of catfish, threw a ball of white bread over the side, and as we watched through that glass boat-bottom, the catfish chased the bread all over the place, one and then the other running with it and all of this in this exquisite underwater world where the water was so very clear—as if it were all happening in the very sky. It was as if the very sky were below you, open and naked.

  And to top it all off, there was a man at Silver Springs named Ross Allen who milked rattlesnakes, putting the rim of a glass into a rattlesnake’s mouth and causing venom to squirt into the glass, a few drops, enough to kill a human being.

  What a good, good time!

  After the men came in from hunting on each of the next three afternoons, Thatcher and I would have a little time to talk alone at a table in the cafe section. He’d tell me all about the hunt. He was very excited on all three days, and would have that safari look which I adore in a man, especially Thatcher who stands so tall and looks so handsome in anything he wears, and Meredith of course would be trying to tell me all these things that happened on the hunt, and Thatcher, bless his heart, would want to be alone with me at the table—as I did want to be alone with him, while at the same time I found Meredith a joy. So finally Meredith and Mark would go out under the shed in the back of the store where Uncle Hawk and Mr. Copeland were cleaning birds.

  The spectacle of a bird cleaning is something to behold: feathers and birds’ insides all over the place, with the cats, Ford and Plymouth, sitting nearby—watching and waiting intently—waiting for the spoils of battle to come flinging their way.

  Thatcher explained how, in the early morning before the hunt, Uncle Hawk comes to the foot of their bed before light and holds their feet until they wake up. Then he comes on over to the store while they get dressed. Then they walk across the road in the dark and in through the back door of the store where Uncle Hawk is cooking breakfast, pretending he’s Old Ross, his granddaddy, and singing while he cooks breakfast like Old Ross used to. Old Ross was Thatcher’s great-granddaddy and died back before Thatcher was born. Thatcher’s granddaddy, Tyree, used to do the same thing at breakfast—sing like his daddy. Now Uncle Hawk pretends he’s Old Ross and he sings.

  Thatcher also told me on the second day that they’d killed a rattlesnake. Horrors!

  We said our warm goodbyes and left without incident on the fifth morning at about six a.m. We drove through some pretty country in Florida, with the trees far apart. I like it with space between the trees. And on up through Georgia and South Carolina.

  At some point when we stopped to let the dogs out, and Thatcher and I were relatively alone, I asked him what Dan Braddock meant when he made the comment about Mark’s father cheating. Thatcher said nobody ever talked about it but it had to do with “another woman” overseas during the war. That’s all he knew. I wondered about it, but also recalled the wisdom of that old saying, “Let bygones be bygones.”

  We finally arrived home without event. My mother said she was relieved the trip was over. She said it with an attitude which led me to believe she didn’t grasp the force with which Thatcher and I were in love.

  MARK

  When we were driving back from Florida, Aunt Mildred told Bliss about finding the drowned kitten that time. That was back when me and Meredith were little. She pulled up the kitten out of the well in the water bucket. Meredith done it—drowned a whole litter. Me and him were playing marbles when she pulled it up. She screams, “Oh, my God,” looks down into the well and says, ‘Are they all down there?” She unhooks the bu
cket from the well rope—it’s got water and the kitten in it—and walks to the tool shed. Meredith and me follow her. She gets a shovel, goes behind the tool shed, sets the water bucket on the ground, digs a hole, and pours the water and the kitten into the hole. The kitten floats, then the water seeps down in the ground, leaving him in the hole, sopping wet, with white skin where his fur is parted. Meredith and me stand there watching. Aunt Mildred covers him up and steps on top of the dirt, which sinks down with her footprints in it over and over. “Where’s Thatcher?” she says. “He was supposed to drown those kittens in the pond.”

  Then when Uncle Albert comes home, and Thatcher says he didn’t do it, that he gave them to Meredith to do it, Uncle Albert finds us.

  “Did you drop them kittens down that well, Meredith?”

  “No sir.”

  “Well, who did?”

  “Mark.”

  “I did not! That’s a story! You did! You held them by the neck and dropped them!”

  “Sit down on that root,” says Uncle Albert. “Both of you. Thatcher, Noralee, come sit on this root right this minute.”

  We all sit. Uncle Albert walks back and forth. He is short and always wears loose overalls. He talks, walking back and forth. Finally he says, “Mark, you go home and tell your mama I’m going to whip you and Meredith and Thatcher. I’ll be waiting right here.”

  When I get home I can’t get my breath to talk because I’m crying so hard. Mother’s looking in the refrigerator when I walk in, and then I am holding onto her, crying. I can look through the window and see that they are standing there waiting for me.

  Mother walks with me outside to the tree. “What happened?” she says.

  “These boys drowned some cats in the wrong place—in the damn well—and I aim to whip mine and I’ll whip yourn if you’re a mind.”

  “I ain’t a mind,” says Mother. “I’ll tend to Mark.”

  We walk back home. Mother walks with her hand on my head. Meredith hollers that he is going to beat me up. Uncle Albert tells him to be quiet.

  I stand at the window and see Uncle Albert talk to them some more and then send them after switches. Then I see him whip them with their pants down, bending over.

  Mother sees me looking and tells me to get away from the window. Then she tells me it’s wrong to drop kittens down the well, but that she knows I didn’t do it, and for me not to ever tell a story.

  The other worse time when Meredith lied was when he started the welldigger and got me to lie too. It was all his fault. I just thought we were going to camp out, that’s all.

  Mother was out on the back porch potting a plant. There was a big, flat black cloud, churning up into itself, but below it you could see the sun setting like a full moon.

  “Mother, can I still camp out?” I say. “Uncle Albert says the rain’s all blowed around.”

  “We’ll have to see, son. Oh, look! Mark, look at that sunset. Oh, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so beautiful. And look what it does to the crepe myrtle.”

  “Can I, Mother?”

  “Look! Come here. Look at that. Isn’t that beautiful?”

  “Yes ma’am. Can I?”

  “Is it going to be just you and Meredith?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “In the backyard?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Well, if you’ll practice your music, and that cloud goes away. But you can’t go off. And if you-all want breakfast in the morning, you come in and eat. I’ll fix you some breakfast. Meredith ain’t old enough to cook yet. He’s liable to burn hisself.”

  So I practice my piano music. I’m playing these songs I don’t like very much. Minuets and stuff. Meredith thinks it’s sissy. I mash on the soft pedal so he won’t hear it from outside. I think about what if I could play boogie-woogie songs like Miss Paulson does after church on Wednesday nights sometimes. I see people standing around me when I finish playing some boogie-woogie, smiling at me, telling me how wonderful it was, what a beautiful way I played it, and there is a girl there, waiting for me, who falls in love with me, and then if I die she’ll kneel down over me and be dressed in a white dress.

  Meredith is putting up the tent on the grass beside the garden over in his backyard.

  “Was that you playing?” he says.

  “Yeah. I hadn’t practiced today.”

  Later, we are lying in the tents on our stomachs, looking at the fire, which is almost out.

  We talk about what we are going to do when we grow up. Meredith says he’s going to be a truck driver and a pilot. I say I’m going to be a doctor and a pilot.

  Meredith asks me about my daddy, and says that his mother told his aunt Joanne from Ohio that my daddy had a French girlfriend when he was in the Army. Meredith says it’s okay because you can do whatever you want to when you’re in the Army.

  I tell him it’s not true about my daddy, and that you have to follow the rules when you’re in the Army.

  Then Meredith says we ought to go over and sit in the welldigger in his yard—and pretend it’s an Army tank. They’re digging a new well. I say okay but I feel worried.

  We go through the darkness, across Meredith’s yard to the welldigger. When we get there he shines his flashlight on it. “Let’s get up in front,” he says.

  We climb up into the truck cab. Meredith sits behind the steering wheel. “Let’s turn on the well-digging part,” he says. He takes the key from a wire hanging on the mirror. We get out and walk in the dark around to the back of the truck. Meredith shines the flashlight on the motor until he finds the key slot. He sticks the key in the slot. It is almost as high as he can reach. He holds the flashlight with his other hand. “They turn the key, then click that switch over there and it starts.” He turns the key. “Click it.”

  “You click it.”

  “Well, hold the flashlight then.” Meredith hands me the flashlight and clicks the switch. The machine cranks with this rattling, cranking, popping noise. I turn out the flashlight and start running, stop, then start again—toward the tent. I have to run past Meredith’s house to get back to the tent. Meredith hollers at me: “Bring the flashlight back!” But I keep running. Lights come on at Uncle Albert’s. The front door opens. I click off the flashlight, duck into a corn row and lay on my stomach and watch. I feel the sand under my belt buckle against my skin, and wet grass blades against my arm. I’m afraid to move.

  Uncle Albert comes out onto the porch and stands under the light bulb. He is in his pajamas, and barefooted. His legs are bowed and his fists balled. “Meredith!”

  Meredith don’t answer. The welldigger sounds like hundreds of pots and pans. Uncle Albert starts down the steps, then turns and goes back in the house. Meredith comes running by me. I call him. He stops, comes back, and ducks into the corn row with me.

  “Come on,” he says. “We got to get out of here.”

  Uncle Albert, now dressed, comes out onto the porch and yells: “Meredith!”

  Meredith drops down beside me.

  Aunt Mildred and Thatcher come onto the porch. They start toward the welldigger.

  We crawl along the corn row, headed for the far end of the garden.

  Meredith says, “Let’s go follow them.” I stop, then I follow him. We hide behind a line of bushes, close to the welldigger.

  Uncle Albert shines the light on the motor in back, finds the switch and turns it off. The welldigger shakes to a stop.

  They start back toward the house; we go running through the garden to the tent. When we get to the tent a light comes on in my house. We duck into the tent and sit on the blankets.

  “Where did you go?” asked Meredith.

  “I was getting out of there.”

  “I couldn’t see how to turn it off. You chicken.”

  “I am not. Why’d you start it up?”

  “To see if it would.”

  “He’s going to know you did it.”

  “No, he won’t. Get under here and play like you’re asleep.”

&nbs
p; We get under the blankets.

  Uncle Albert, Aunt Mildred, and Thatcher walk up to the tent.

  “Meredith?” says Uncle Albert. “Come out here.”

  Meredith throws back his blanket. I don’t move. He crawls out.

  “Meredith, how come this fresh mud is tracked across here and how come you got mud all over your boots? How come you wearing your boots?”

  “We tried to catch a nigger trying to start up the welldigger and then we came back here. That’s all.”

  “That’s a joke,” says Thatcher. “You done it sure as day. You lie.”

  I can kind of see a nigger in my mind. “Yeah,” I say, crawling out.

  “Let’s go to bed,” said Mildred, “and talk about it tomorrow. It won’t nothing but them starting up the welldigger, and now it’s turned off. Don’t crank it up no more, Meredith. And you boys quit fibbin’—your nose’ll fall off.”

  Mother walks up. “What’s going on?”

  “Somebody started up the welldigger,” says Thatcher.

  “I heard it,” said Mother. “Have you been away from that tent, Mark?”

  “Yes ma’am, we had to… to try to see who started the welldigger over there.”

  “I told you not to leave that tent.”

  “We had to go try to find out who it was,” says Meredith, “and it was a nigger. A big nigger. So we came back. It was. Whether you believe it or not. It was a nigger. Big.”

  “I’m going to bed,” says Mildred, starting to the house. “Good night.”

  Mother makes us go inside and sleep in my room. Meredith sleeps on a mattress on the floor. We talk some before we go to sleep and I look through the window screen at the mimosa tree and the stars in the black sky, and wish we were outside.

  Those were two times Meredith lied. I don’t tell lies. Except I did that time about the welldigger, but it was because of Meredith, and I got to thinking about it. I thought about the nigger until I could see him in the darkness by the welldigger, moving slowly, white eyes in the dark, moving in the darkness around to the far side of the welldigger. The nigger had been there. Jesus would still love me if the nigger had been there and he probably had been. He could have been there, but in case he hadn’t been there at all, I prayed: “Jesus, I’m sorry—if the nigger won’t there. I think he might have been there, though. Dear Jesus, I’m sorry—if the nigger won’t there.”