Flying Blind

“What do you mean, radio?”

“We have a Philco, it’s a super-heterodyne that gets short-wave transmissions. It’s a family hobby—my dad and brother and me. We put up a sixty-foot copper mesh antenna.”

I took a last swig of Coke and said, “You don’t have a phone in the house, and you have a short-wave radio with a sixty-foot antenna?”

“Oh, it gets more than short wave. We listen to Jack Armstrong, Tom Mix, and the Shadow, too!” He shrugged. “I’ve heard dozens of transmissions from Amelia, since she took off from Lae…”

I blinked, then looked over at Mantz who rolled his eyes, when Robert wasn’t looking.

The boy was saying, “I listen every night…. It’s summer, and my dad works nights, and Mom doesn’t care if I stay up; I mean, she knows how much trouble I have sleeping with my brother in the same bed, snoring. So, I’m just fooling around, twisting the dial, and I come onto this woman’s voice saying, ‘That was close! We just cleared the tail fifty feet!’ I couldn’t believe my ears! It was Amelia’s voice! On my radio! It didn’t take me long to figure out what I was hearing—I mean, reading about the flight in the paper every day, for a month! What I heard was Amelia on takeoff, when she was just leaving the airstrip.”

“Robert,” Mantz said, gently, “you know there have been some radio recreations, some dramatic—”

“Not happening at the exact same time as when she took off! I’m sorry, Mr. Mantz—I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just—I know what I heard.” His speech picked up speed, as if his conversation were lifting off a runway after a long taxi. “And then she was talking to a radioman back on Lae, named Balfour, saying Mr. Noonan had passed her a sealed envelope with a note about a change of flight plans. She seemed really peeved…. The radioman said he didn’t know about the change, that his orders were to give her weather reports. She said something about flying north to Truk Island.”

It was like listening to an idiot savant rattle off trigonometry equations. “You remember all this?”

He nodded, blond shock bouncing. “I wrote it down. I got my school notebook and I’ve been writing everything down.”

“There’s more?”

“Dozens of transmissions over the last few days!”

I sat forward, not really buying any of this, but impressed with his imagination. Mantz looked amused.

“She came on later, more relaxed, not so mad, even giggling a little, as she called out the names of islands she was flying over, trying to pronounce them—I heard her mention the tip of Rabaul, for instance. She lost contact with Lae about three hundred miles out, but I heard her say Noonan was getting good pictures of the Caroline Islands.”

“And you’re hearing all this over your Philco?” I asked.

“Sure! I heard her talkin’ to that ship, the Itasca, too! I heard her make her first contact with ’em, when they asked her to identify herself and she said, ‘The name is Putnam, but I don’t use that.’”

I had to chuckle; that did sound like her. Even Mantz was smiling a little, though I could tell he figured this kid was spinning a yarn.

“I listened all night,” Robert said. “She came on naming islands as she passed over them, sayin’ they were off her left or right wing…Bikar, Majuro, Jaluit, I’m leavin’ a few out but I got ’em written down…. She said there was plenty of good light and they could see the islands fine. Then she had trouble getting the Itasca to hear her—here I am, in my living room in California, and I can hear her fine! I mean, there’s static and everything, and she kinda comes in and out, but I heard her asking Itasca to turn on their lights, sayin’ she must be circling the ship, but she couldn’t come down because it was too dark, she got there too early. Then it just got worse and worse…. They weren’t answering her…. She kept saying her fuel was low. She told the Itasca she was gonna try for Hull Island, but they didn’t hear her, and that’s when she spotted the Japanese fighter planes.”

“Fighter planes.”

He nodded, wild-eyed. “One was above her, the other two were near her wingtips; they fired on her! Machinegun bursts!”

“Look, kid—” Mantz began.

The boy just kept going, gesturing with both hands. “They were trying to force her to land at Hull, but when she looked down, she saw these ships offshore—a fishing boat, and two battleships—but they were able to outrun the Japs in the Electra, it was much faster. Mr. Noonan had her fly toward an island called Sydney, just a hundred miles away, and all the time she was still callin’ the Itasca, no response. And then one engine sputtered out—they could see the island! But then the other one went out, too, and I heard her say, ‘Oh, my goodness! We’re out of fuel!’”

As silly as this story was, hearing Amy’s familiar “Oh, my goodness!” from this kid’s mouth sent a chill up me.

“I heard the plane make this awful loud thud—you’d think it would have sounded more like a splash, but it didn’t—and I waited for seconds that seemed like hours before she came back on, saying, ‘We missed the trees and the coral reef…. We’re on the water.’ She said Mr. Noonan injured his head, shoulder, and arm and she stopped transmitting to go check on him…. Then it was morning, and I lost them…. I’d been listening twelve hours or more.”

“Is this the story you told the police?” I asked.

Mantz was leaned back with a hand over his eyes.

“Oh, you listened to a lot more of it than the desk sergeant on the phone did…. They’re still out there, Nate… Mr. Mantz…Amelia and Mr. Noonan. I’ve been listening to them every night. She comes on every hour and doesn’t stay on long—conserving the battery. They’re floating on the water…. They’re hot and they’re hungry and Amelia’s really mad, she keeps saying, ‘Why are you doing this to us? Why don’t you come get us? You know where we are.’ Things like that. It’s real sad. But they are still alive…. Isn’t that a relief?”