“What?” Max asks when he sees me staring.
It can’t be. I shake my head. “Nothing. Where are the suitcases?”
“Already on board,” Jake replies. “We shipped them ahead. Wouldn’t do to have Francesco and Max seen hauling luggage around, would it?”
“Good point,” I reply. He seems to have thought of everything. Maybe he even knows what kind of aircraft this is. I point and warily ask, “Is this a Cessna 210?”
“Pretty sure it is.”
A kid comes around the front of the aircraft, smiles at us, and gives Jake a quick half hug. There’s a slight family resemblance there, something in the chin and cheekbones. But whereas Jake is a little on the short side and balding, the newcomer is tall and gangly with mussed black hair covering his ears. He’s wearing blue jeans, a button-down, western-style, long-sleeve shirt and a pair of beaten-up Nike sneakers that may have been white at some point in the distant past. Think castles, knights on white chargers, lots of kings and queens in charge of the Western world—that far back.
“Is this thing a Cessna 210?” Jake asks the youngster.
“Yup. A Centurion.”
Holy shit. Given what happened to the only other Cessna 210 I know anything about, I’m not sure how I feel about flying in this thing. “Does it fly?” I ask in a lame attempt at humor.
The kid gives me an odd look before he leads us around the airplane and opens the door leading into the rear passenger compartment. I follow Papa and Max inside and glance up to greet our pilot, but the left front seat is empty. I glance back outside and see Jake talking with the kid.
He slaps the youngster on the shoulder. “Thanks, Tony. I owe you one.”
“I’d say you owe me several!” the kid counters with a grin.
“Jake’s nephew, Tony,” Max explains when he sees me watching. “We’ll call him Tony Junior for tonight.”
Jake pokes his head inside while we strap in, Papa and me in the rearmost seat looking forward and Max in a seat that backs onto the pilot’s seat and faces us. Our knees are maybe three or four feet apart.
“Have a good trip, guys,” Jake says as he shakes hands all around. “Good luck,” he adds pointedly to Papa and Max before he turns and walks away.
Tony Junior speaks briefly with another man who is wearing the type of coveralls Billy Likens and Rick Hogan wear on the job. Junior then climbs into the pilot’s seat and starts flicking a bewildering array of knobs and switches and dials while the mechanic waits.
I take advantage of the opportunity to examine my surroundings. There are windows on either side of us with a pretty good view outside, the roof is close overhead, and the black floor is made from the same type of material I’m accustomed to seeing under my feet in jetways when I board or exit real airplanes. The seats are leather, or a pretty decent imitation thereof. I’m reminded of piling into the cavernous back of our old Pontiac station wagon as kids when we went on road trips… and I’m going to fly how many feet high in this thing?
My eyes snap forward when the kid pulls his seat belt and shoulder strap snug, fires up the engine, and glances over his shoulder. “Everyone strapped in back there?”
“You’re our pilot?” I blurt as the engine roars to life.
“He’s older than he looks,” Max assures me while Tony Junior nods and smiles at me.
Older than he looks, huh? So, he’s what? Sixteen? Megan Walton could have been his mother!
After the engine settles into a steady purr, I try to console myself with the reassuring knowledge that he at least knows where the on switch is.
Junior shoots a cheerful thumbs-up to the ramp hand outside, who promptly disappears beneath the aircraft and emerges dragging the black-and-yellow rubber thingies that kept the plane from rolling away. He walks across the floor to push the hangar doors aside. Then, before I have a chance to leap out of the aircraft, we’re on our way out into the night.
“Next stop, Minneapolis-Saint Paul!” Junior announces happily as we taxi away from safety. “I’d like to thank you for flying with us this evening on Plummer’s Put-Put Airlines.”
Papa pays no attention to our pilot’s patter, Max dutifully chuckles, and I look around for the nearest barf bag. Then we’re clawing our way into the black sky at fifteen or twenty miles per hour and bouncing along as if we’re hitting atmospheric potholes every five or six feet. Or so it seems… I hope to hell we’re going faster than that.
“Looks like we got away cleanly,” Max says with satisfaction. “Nobody got shot, anyway.”
“Yeah, that’s a relief,” I reply dryly. I’m surrounded on a death flight by comedians. Not exactly how I imagined going out.
Just under five white-knuckle hours later, we’re back on blessed terra firma, rolling past blue taxiway lights until we reach the general aviation apron. An airport pickup truck awaits us. I clamber out of the plane ahead of Max and Papa and resist the urge to kiss the ground. Then I help schlep their bags to the back of the pickup. The smell of approaching snow is in the air as a fuel truck pulls up alongside the Cessna. I hope to hell we’re on our way before the white shit arrives.
After a quick hug and goodbye, Papa climbs into the front
