tower men and drivers also possessed. But this man insisted that I fly over near the place where the old farmer had been found dead.
'Say, what?' I asked incredulously.
'You know,' he responded, 'the ole black man, the one they found dead in his pickup truck, oh, five, maybe six, years ago. Out that way'
Luckily, most of the time, knowing that I was unfamiliar with the area, they used map coordinates. But today I folded my map and stowed it. Determined to get into this fight, I dove low over the trucks opposite their direction of movement along the old logging road they had chosen. I wanted them to turn around and approach the fire from another angle, and I had picked out a route they could use. My low pass seemed to puzzle them, although I knew it was an accepted signal. The lead driver opened his door and looked up, as I made a second pass, the Cub's wheels flashing only a few feet over the truck's cab. Then they responded and the trucks began to turn around. I spent the next fifteen minutes herding the trucks toward the worst part of the fire, and I could imagine them talking as clearly as if I were in the truck with them: 'I hope that tomfool pilot knows what the blazes he's doin'.'
Time and again I flew past the advancing face of the inferno, and with the side window slid back I felt the searing heat on my face. And I watched with utter fascination as the fire down below began to 'crown' a frightening spectacle, seeing it jump from treetop to treetop, driven before the wind. On one foray around the leeward side, I climbed high and challenged the smoke column, a supremely reckless deed. But I was loving this time of struggle and combat and started to grow cocky.
I intended only to sideswipe the cloud, to be immersed in it just a few seconds. They were among the most frightening moments of my flying career. At first I felt a bump or two and smelled the burning timber. Then the heat shaft seized the Cub and pitched us violently, as if the raging monster had grabbed us by the throat and was shaking us asunder. I choked from smoke and strained my burning eyes for signs of daylight, hoping that the engine would continue to aspirate. Then, as suddenly as it hit, it spit us out the side of the shaft into clear, calm air.
My watering eyes fluttered for relief, and I filled my lungs with sweet air. Shaking, I radioed the base station that I was recovering for gas at Monroeville, a few miles to the north. I didn't really need gas. There were almost two hours left in the tanks, but I desperately needed a break.
I taxied up to the fuel pumps and shut the engine down, looking back toward the still visible smoke column as I stepped onto the porch. The local gang greeted me and asked about the fire, then allowed as to how they knew the Loop was going to blow up any day now. I grabbed a Coke and strolled to the back room, where my friend Dick Dammon was strumming his guitar as usual, dog sleeping at his side.
Maybe the Chuck Yeager types never need solace, but sometimes the ordinary flier needs to find a confidant upon whom to unload his own nagging inadequacies and shortcomings. I, for one, long for a kindred soul to say (to lie, if need be) that he has been there as well, to say with a soothing chuckle, 'Yeah, I know what you mean. I've done that too.'
I had come to know Dick quite well in the last several weeks. I enjoyed visiting with him on these stopovers. He worked at night, flying canceled checks in a Cessna Skymaster. He stayed there at the field during the day. They'd given him a cot in the back room. He and I had much in common: we were about the same age, both recently out of the Air Force, and both somewhat outsiders in this rural worldhe especially, being a Yankee and all.
But Dick was an enigma. I couldn't quite figure him. Outwardly he seemed to be the model of a person at total peace with himself and the world. All his happiness seemed to require was his guitar, his dog, and his modest flying job. Yet there was a hint of turmoil in his eyes. He didn't talk much about himself, and I knew little of his past, except that he flew C-7 Caribou transports in Viet Nam.
On my normal fire patrol I'd spend more time there, but I had to leave Dick and return to the hunt. Already the base station had telephoned to alert me that more fires were breaking out elsewhere in the district. I fired up the Super Cub and waved to the airport bums.
They wanted to know how quickly I could get airborne. I swung the plane around into the wind, clearing for other air traffic as I turned. I held hard on the brakes, firewalled the throttle, and held the stick as far back as it would go, like a carrier pilot about to catapult. The asphalt runway was about a hundred yards away, but I didn't use it. I released the brakes and bounded across the small parking apron, laboring into the air over the grassy edge not much more than a good stone's throw away. I knew I couldn't have done that if a stiff headwind hadn't slipped me an extra ace, but it was a crowd pleaser. Patting the Cub for its performance and feeling refreshed, I turned eastward. But after a short cruise I saw that something strange was happening.
I was heading for a fire in the distance. It was not very big, but another fire had just started a short distance north of it. As I reached the first smoke, the second one had billowed higher, and now a third baby fire had been born still farther north. I could see that all three fires had broken out along a dirt road barely visible beneath the heavy pine timber. I dropped down as low as I dared, the tires barely clearing the treetops, banking carefully left then right, catching fleeting glimpses of the dirt road. Suddenly I saw what I had suspected.
A yellow Volkswagen bug chugged along slowly, barely moving, the driver obviously concerned about my presence overhead. I passed over and rolled into a steep 360-degree turn, cobbing the power to maintain airspeed above the stall, which at this height, would be fatal. I rolled out and crossed the road about where I had sighted him, but he was gone. Again coming about, I slowed the Cub back and followed the snaking road but to no avail. I then doubled back and caught a glimpse of the bug parked on a side road in a thicket. Again I cobbed the power and swung back around. He knew he'd been discovered, and he fled northward. I chuckled over the reflection that I was in a cat-and-mouse game, but then thought no, this was a cub-and-bug game. I felt immensely alive and totally at one with the Cub.
Certain that I had found an arsonist, I climbed for a higher altitude and radioed the discovery to the base station. I passed along the coordinates of the fires, and the route and description of the escaping bug. The answer came that the Highway Patrol was being notified as well as the large paper corporation that owned the pine tree plantation. I reflected on what one of the rangers had told me of forest arsonists: they are often discontented or terminated employees of the paper companies. I desperately wanted this guy to be caught, but I knew that the charge would never stand up in court, as I had not seen him in the act of torching the woods. But maybe they could match tire prints or something. I finally lost the bug under the heavy timber as it fled northward, and I had to abandon the chase.
The day was finally done and none too soon because I was about wasted, both physically and mentally. I was crossing the lowlands of a river bottom on a long, straight-in approach. The bayous below were clear and glassy calm, their banks laced with Spanish moss hanging in long white curtains from the thick hardwoods. I passed over a boat with two men casting lines and dropped down low, waving my arm out to them. They honored me by returning the wave, which was delightful because I knew then that they had not resented my noisy intrusion. But as I looked back up toward the airfield, the engineLycoming Model 0-320-E2A, one eachceased operation. Quit cold.
The silence was more powerful than the roar of afterburner. Immediately I felt the Cub decelerate. The nose dropped. The prop windmilled. My heart ripped away and clambered up my throat, the torn arteries gripping my clenched teeth, demanding, pleading like an imprisoned sailor, to be released from the brig before the ship went down. I was suddenly transformed into a glider at 300 feet above a heavy woodland. The airfield was still a good mile away. Tremors oscillated wildly up and down my spine as I swung my head with frantic alarm left and right, looking for a clearing or a road, but it was only instinct. I knew there was no such sanctuary out here. I realized then that I was going to have to land in the trees. I had to remember to fly the plane downto resist the urge to raise the nose and stretch the glide toward the airfield. If I hit the trees in a slight descent, at just above stall speed, I might survive, but a stall would most certainly be fatal.
I had about thirty seconds to run through the engine failure procedure, which was about standard for most light planes. Steeped in fright and foreboding, I figured that it was useless, but at least I'd be doing something rather than just sitting there waiting for the blunt trauma. I looked up at the magneto switches. Both were on. I pushed the mixture control knob in. It was there already. I rechecked the airspeed. Sixty knots. No less. Let's see, I still had oil pressure. I was conscious of a breathless, buzzing feeling. What was left? The fuel selector valve was somewhere down on the
THE FUEL!!
My hand reached down, trembling, fumbling, groping for the fuel selector; found it; switched it to the opposite tank. Instantly the engine fired up and roared back into life. I laughed wildly at the wonderful noise and yelled at the top of my voice.
