Twenty-odd years ago, on a blistering day in August, with Hurley's Stockyards stinking up the air in three counties, the plane came down.  It crashed on Jigger Hill — actually a rise — 1.7 miles due north of the old Wendell Airport.  Besides leaving behind a mess of twisted smoking steel, the downed plane scorched the ground so thoroughly that in places it looked branded.

I worked fleet service back then, a fancy title for guys who cleaned planes; and in our case doubled/tripled as baggage handlers and freight loaders.

I'm not talking big jet aircraft.  The ones that came through Wendell were prop jobs, puddle-jumpers, long haulers making milk runs: short hops with up to a dozen landings a day.  Cleaning them was no quick swipe with a rag.  Some folks spent time on those planes: snack after snack, nap after nap, magazine after magazine. Those airplanes saw some real wear and tear.

I'm talking heavy duty vacuuming, scrubbing out biffys and adding blue chemical to the toilet systems, ammonia spray on windows and tray tables, emptying those galleys clean, folding blankets, dumping ashtrays, changing headrests and pillow covers. And everyone's least favorite: cleaning out the seat-pockets.  Reaching inside the cloth flap to dig out half-eaten food, coffee cups, dirty diapers, condoms, you name it: some folks knew how to make themselves right at home.   

Overall, the operation at Wendell was fairly lean.  A single runway.  Your basic flat roof, cement-block terminal building.  Besides our normal crew of twenty, a handful of others performed your typical airport functions.  And of course there was our Station Manager, Don F. Shaw.  A hell of a guy, Don; one of the best.  A little trouble with the bottle, but never on company time.      

I can remember feeling pretty good that day, my shift winding down and two days off stretched out in front of me.  Seated at the terminal lunch counter I was thinking I might do a little lake fishing.  I'd just polished off a pair of chili dogs smothered with onions and a batch of French fries.  The clock on the wall read a couple of minutes past noon.  Still some time left before the next inbound, and I was feeling real loose and lazy, propped on my elbow watching Bobby Star tease Marie.   

"Egg salad sandwiches three days in a row!  Marie are you trying to poison us?"  Bobby stood near the refrigerator case and threw us a wink. "Think I’m gonna have to call the Board of Health," he said sniffing suspiciously at the sandwich.

Behind the lunch counter, Marie, laughing and dimpling, protested that the sandwiches were made fresh daily.  It was clear she liked the attention she was getting from Bobby.  All the girls did.  He was young and good looking, tall and lean like a cowboy except he wasn’t one.  Plus he never talked crude the way some of the guys carried on.  Marie thought Bobby was genuine.     

"He's the genuine article," she once told me, primping and checking her reflection in the door to the pie case.

At the time her comment struck me as odd.  But Wendell, back then, was crawling with odd-balls.  Lots of people with no real skills poured in looking for work.  They knew they'd get training, a steady wage and union benefits.  And once a year, at the Christmas Party, each employee was handed their annual pass — one free ticket donated by the big airlines based in Kansas City.

A person could travel to quite a choice of interesting spots on one of those passes.  Most of mine I let pile up in the kitchen drawer for use at some future time.

Not Bobby Star.  I believe he used every one of his.  In the years he worked at Wendell he traveled to some pretty exotic locales. Venice and Singapore stand out in my mind.  When those other guys took trips they came back with stacks of pictures to pass around so everyone could gawk.  Not Bobby.  He didn't take any; and if he did he never showed them around.  What Bobby brought back were plates.  China plates from all the places he'd visited in the world.  I never actually saw them.  Jim Crowley, a close friend to Bobby, let the cat out; though I don't believe Bobby ever intended on keeping them a secret. 

According to Jim, they were arranged all around Bobby's living room.  He even had a custom cabinet built with grooved shelves so the plates could stand without falling over.  Special ceiling lights, too, that showed off their patterns in a real nice way. 

For as long as I knew Bobby he’d always lived with his dad. After his dad passed, he lived alone.  Except for a sister and her kids he had no other relations.  So I guess, in his unique way, Bobby decided to provide for their future.  Each time he brought home a plate he marked it underneath with a slice of masking tape, adding one of the kid's names.  Jim Crowley said that Bobby called it his legacy.  He figured the tape would eliminate any squabbling after he was gone. 

Well when that business about the plates got out, Jerry, one of the mechanics, labeled Bobby a fem.  Some of the other guys began to talk behind his back, too, spouting similar shit.  Bobby never called any of them on it, and he was no coward.  Like everything else at Wendell, for a while it was hot then it was history.

Our main problem was boredom.  Most planes landed in clumps of three or four, within, say, a half hour of each other.  There was a big push to get them serviced and out.  Then hours till the next batch arrived.  Guys camped out in the locker room reading the paper and playing cards, or hung in the lunchroom playing practical jokes.  Anything having to do with sex was popular — the dirtier the better.  Those guys could really drag out your dirty laundry, turning it inside out, hoping to discover some juicy tidbit tucked away like an old Tootsie Roll you’d jammed in your pocket; dusty, like half-forgotten secrets.

When you got to thinking about it, the entire airline industry was founded on a system of codes: everything hidden behind symbols.  A secret lingo.  Designed to keep us separate, apart from the outside world.   

Wendell Airport code was WLL.  Kansas City, MKC.  Robert Starzynski became Bobby Star.  Guys working out on the field got lumped together as ramp rats.  Ladies wearing saris, on deviations from Wichita, were red dots.  The codes, the jokes, the bullshit — went on and on.  We felt we were different from the pack, the guys who drove trucks or poured concrete for a living.  And we liked it that way.     

That day in the lunchroom with Bobby and Marie was like any of a thousand other days; until the P.A. blared the announcement: A plane was in trouble.  Don Shaw didn't go into details:  "Get out the fire truck and foam the runway," he ordered, his voice breaking up in the static. 

The whole terminal emptied onto the field.  Sirens could be heard in the distance as back-up vehicles made their way toward the airport.  I looked at the sky.  Saw the plane circling low and I got this funny feeling.  And before they'd foamed even half the runway, it took a dive. 

I shot across the field, hopped the runway fence and kept going.  Other people were running too, or whizzed by in cars that flattened out small bushes and grass that had grown untroubled on that land for decades.  As I pushed through the thicket screening the southern rim of Jigger Hill, the plane blew.  

Smoke erupting high into the sky, turning it thick and black; erasing all that’s blue and hopeful about a summer’s day. My eyes and nose began streaming like open faucets.  I stopped running to fumble in my regulation coveralls for a rag.  At that point I'll admit I thought about turning back.  A moment later feeling ashamed, as others continued to run past me.  Wiping my face as best I could, I started running again.    

Halfway up the slope the incredible heat from the plane stopped us.  People were milling around like startled goats, their mouths dropped open, eyes bugging out.  Others stood stock still.  Through dense smoke I caught a glimpse of the wreckage, a flash of silver that had been its fuselage.  Fire trucks from five counties were shooting water, but the blaze seemed determined to get the better of them.         

Don Shaw walked the hill, he was telling people to go back to the terminal, wait in the lunchroom.

I looked at my watch.  It was caked with soot.  I held out my bare arms.  Fine black powder had settled over me the way river silt used to cling to my skin when I was a kid and dove too close to bottom — disturbing what was meant to lay quiet. Springing up from the cool water, I would brush off the particles, always surprised how they stuck-on, even after a good swim.  

That day on the hill, brushing off my watch, I was surprised again.  At what?  That an hour had elapsed in what seemed like a span of minutes?  Or that thirty years had gone by in much the same way? 

 Then Bobby had appeared at my side. "Come on," he said.  And I walked away with him, Marie, and some others, the late day sun beating down.  That the sun could remain in the sky while the plane was burning seemed a terrible thing; obscene, somehow.  It should be a gray and ugly day when a plane comes down, I was thinking.

The walk back was slow going.  My legs felt encased in cement.  We all stuck pretty close together — not that we were touching, nothing like that; nobody dared touch anyone else.  But nobody seemed real anxious to pull ahead.  As we got within sight of the terminal someone shouted Look! 

A large crowd had gathered along the cyclone fence, the one we put up next to the runway to keep farm animals from straying into the flight path.  As we rounded the far end of the field I could see a policeman posted near the crowd.  It dawned on me that we might be in for trouble.  Some people along the fence were shouting things.  What stunned me most was their high spirits.

"We came to see the plane crash,” a blonde woman shouted, “and they're keeping us back here behind this damned fence."

It seemed we were on the side of the fence they wanted to be on.  I could see their frustration.  Also their fury.  The blonde woman held the hands of two little boys, all three wearing bright summer colors, bobbing up and down like balloons. Circus side-show came to mind.  I fumbled for my sunglasses.  Not finding them in my coveralls I squinted at the woman.  Her face was very pink, damp-looking.  Bright pink lipstick filling the creases of her lips.  My eyes moved down her neck to the tops of her breasts, puffy in a low-cut blouse.  She wasn’t bad looking; but she made me feel queasy.  Made me want to shield my eyes and look away.  Or, maybe, even more closely at her.  

Determined to get what they wanted, the crowd dogged us down the length of chain link fencing.  I watched them, waiting, expecting someone would try and climb over; every minute aware of them, as they were of us.  Each side wanting something different. When we reached the spot where the fence ended, we were forced to turn toward the terminal, and that's when they got us.  Closing in tight.  Demanding answers.  For a little while we were poked and shoved.  What had become of the cop? I wondered.  A man with a camera took shot after shot of us until finally somebody yelled: Enough!  That seemed to snap us out of our stupor, and shoving through the crowd we sprinted the final distance to the terminal.

Three of our guys had taken a position at the terminal door. Bobby Star among them.  By then the sun had started to dip and the old concrete building cast the three men in its long shadow. With their arms folded and their legs spread wide they made it clear: Anyone uninvited was in for serious trouble. 

The guy with the camera ran up saying he worked for some newspaper, begging to be let inside.  When they ignored him he pounded on the glass.  I saw Bobby's chin jut out — just a fraction; and realized how close Bobby was to the edge. 

The lunchroom was teeming.  Volunteers, firemen from five counties, police, rescue workers; possibly a few of the gawkers had squeaked in.  Red Cross workers moved through the crowd handing out soft drinks and sandwiches in clear wrap.  With each new arrival the racket and confusion grew worse.  Then Don Shaw came in and commandeered one of the round tables near the wall, waving us over. 

Somehow I found a chair, dragging it across the floor, noticing for the first time the linoleum tiles: green with black flecks. 

More than a decade, five days a week I'd eaten in that lunchroom and suddenly the floor tiles stood out.  Everything seemed in sharp contrast to everything else.  The lousy orange plastic chair — looked so specific.  Important.  I sank into it. My arms felt sore.  I poked at them.  The skin, tender, was singed from the heat of the crash.  I held one arm out in front of me and it looked strangely magnified: like it was outlined in bright white chalk.

Don Shaw sat down at the table folding his rough hands in front of him.  I thought he might be saying a prayer.  Then he cleared his throat saying, "What I have in here is the manifest."  He held up a manila folder.  "As you all know, it gives us the names of everyone on board.  We've been able to round up most of their next of kin." 

He let the folder containing the manifest drop to the table, and leaning forward, resting on his elbows, dug his knuckles into his forehead.  Finally he looked up.  His head turning slowly, making its way around the table, pausing to stare into each face: people he'd known forever.  When he spoke his voice was low; with all the racket in the lunchroom I had to strain to hear.  

"What I'm about to ask of you isn't going to be easy.  For you or me.  But we're all professionals here.  And it's our duty to carry out this assignment," Don told us.  

Heads began wagging like crazy, people whispering: What's he talking about, what's going on? 

"As of right now, everything in and out of here has been canceled," Don said.  "Until we get things straightened out.  But tonight, at 2100 hours, a plane is due in from Kansas City.  On it will be the next of kin."  I watched his adam’s apple bob as he swallowed a few times. 

"It will be your duty,” he said, “the duty of each of you to meet with one of those families.  To be their friend.  A buddy to them while they're here.  Remember, folks, besides being airline policy, it's the right thing to do." 

For a little while there was some buzzing over that news.  Then Don held his hands up for quiet.  From inside the folder he took out a pile of index cards, sliding them, one at a time, across the table — like he was dealing cards in the locker room. Except it wasn't a game, and I didn’t want to play. 

I looked furtively at the card pushed toward me — RUTH H. DILLARDhad been block-printed across the center.  In smaller letters at the bottom: Alice P. Murphy

Don was apologizing, saying, "Some damn fool wrote these up in red ink.  The deceased," and he cleared his throat, “the deceased is the name or names on the middle of your card.  At the bottom is their next of kin.  It’s the people at the bottom you’ll want to be kind to.  The others...well for them it’s too late.”  And with that he pushed himself heavily out of the chair, circling the table to shake the hand of every man.  Marie, and Linda, the secretary, he hugged.  The formalities were over.   

***

Night came quick, black and littered with stars.  The wind seemed to pick up a few knots; this could be gauged by the stink from the stockyards.  That night the wind would gust, go quiet, then gust some more; kicking up lots of dust in the process.       Then all too fast 2100 hours were upon us.  We stood together on the tarmac waiting for the plane from Kansas City.  Despite that hot heavy air I was shivering.  And, worried.  I stared at Ruth H. Dillard on my card thinking I would never get to know this person.  And her next of kin, due to arrive shortly, what would she be like?  Alice P. Murphy?  What would happen when the families disembarked? 

First, the lights.  Beautiful as always on a night landing they sliced the darkness.  I swear I held my breath.  I believe we all did.  But that pilot was God, and brought her down softly like the runway had eggshells.  Someone started clapping then stopped cold.  It was a small group of us out there, a short distance from where the aircraft would park; miles of empty space surrounding us, yet we stood close together.    

We watched it taxi, then watched Fred wheeling over the stairs.  Don shouting that we should form a line.  He put himself at the head of the line at the bottom of the stairs, I could see him greeting the first person as they stepped down onto the field.   

We all felt jumpy.  Richie, one of the ramp rats, seemed especially jumpy.  Behind me in line he was staring hard at his index card and rubbing his chin with his other hand, to the point where I thought he’d take the skin off.  

"I got a woman and her five kids on this card," Richie said. "Some guy left behind a wife and five kids."  He sounded like he might start to bawl any minute.

Sandwiched between me and Bobby Star, Richie continued to moan, mauling his chin.  Then Don called out Richie's name, telling him to step forward and meet the Klapp family. 

I saw Bobby's arm swing around me, and he grabbed Richie's card and swapped it with his own.

"Hey!"  It was all Richie had time for.  Bobby had gone to the head of the line, was already meeting the lady and her five kids.

As for my Alice P. Murphy, she never got off.  I waited, and eventually did a search of the plane thinking she might have been too distraught to get off.  The plane was empty.  I didn’t know what to make of it.  Don said not to worry, that I could help out wherever I was needed.       

***

The rest of that week would proceed this way: every morning the mini-vans arrived at the airport around nine, transporting  the families who’d been put up at a nearby motel.  Each employee would locate their special family then escort them into the lunchroom for breakfast.  It was a bad set up.  The room being too small to feed everyone at the same time.  Some folks had to wait.  They usually ended up leaning on the walls staring into space, getting totally unglued.  I can’t remember a single breakfast where people didn't break down crying.  Not having a family of my own meant I spent a lot of time trying to calm down other people’s families; a blessing and a curse.     

When everyone was finally fed we piled into the mini-vans to take the short drive to the hangar.  That old airplane hangar had become our make-shift morgue.  The coroner and his team of one other doctor and one dentist working practically around the clock trying to identify bodies.  And, what remained of them.

From the moment we arrived, things got steadily worse.  There was the smell of burnt flesh.  Sharp, and so strong it made your eyes tear.  Like a lifetime of cheeses left out to spoil, someone said.  It got in your clothes, hair, everything.  At the end of that week I had to throw away my leather belt.  Combined with the misery, an average daily temperature of ninety-five, and the giant floor fans whirring non-stop, it made for one awful situation.       

After supper, when the families had been driven back to the motel, a group of us gathered in the lunchroom; everyone way too wired to go home and sleep.  It didn't feel right — sleep.  Though god knows we could've used some.   

Then one night, part way into the week, Jim Crowley mentioned how we all stank.  He said, "You notice the families don't seem to mind the smell?  I mean, we all mind it.  How could they not?"       

People were nodding.  It was true.  I never heard a single family member mention it, or saw any of them gag; or run outside for air.  The first few times in the hangar I had to fight the urge to puke.  Bobby Star was among us that night in the lunchroom, his long frame angled into a plastic chair.  He’d let out a moan then, a sound an animal might make.

"I think the smell gives them comfort," he said. 

Mouths fell open, everyone turning quiet.  Soon people mumbled about being tired and our group broke up for the night. 

***

The families were not allowed to view the victims.  They had to keep to the forward section of the hangar which had been blocked off from the part designated the morgue.  We made this separation by tacking up enormous sheets of grey plastic that stretched floor to ceiling.  Try as you might, it was pretty hard to clear your mind of what was taking place behind those sheets. I'd been back there myself a few times.  It wasn't good.  Bodies, parts of bodies, body bags strewn everywhere.  The big floor fans made the plastic snap and shimmy, billowing into the forward area where the families spent the day.  Every so often someone wandering too close to the border would bump into one of those huge air filled curtains, and let out a shriek.   

That forward area was called "The Family Section" and coded TFS.  Long tables had been set up in TFS.  Each day new items would appear on those tables, things the rescue workers had uncovered the night before while picking through the wreckage.  All day the families circled the tables.  They studied the new items, plus the older things, with all the intensity of an archeological dig.  Holding them up to the light, turning them every which way.  It became a kind of ceremony.  Spotting something they recognized, like a watch or hairbrush, wallet or ring, caused some of them to become almost crazed with excitement.  As if in that single item things could change back to before.    

Hot and dry, the days rolled out like carbon copies.  We talked a lot about rain.  Some said they prayed for it, to cool things down and wash the slate clean.  Except for meals in the lunchroom, our days were spent at TFS.  After supper the families returned to the motel.  For us it was back to the lunchroom — a pep talk from Don sometimes; but mostly just to wind down; for some of us a cry, out of sight of the families.  I didn’t cry.  Without a family, I felt like a fifth wheel. 

On the sixth night I caught up again with Bobby Star.  It was late, the lunchroom dimly lit, maybe half a dozen guys and Marie huddled at the counter.  I heard Bobby before I actually noticed him.

"I just got this feeling," Bobby was saying.  "Marsha calls it a vision.  You see, I knew I was meant to have this particular family.  That's why I swapped index cards with Richie."  And he half smiled, pushing back that shock of light hair that always fell across his forehead.

It hit me that he was talking about the lady with the five kids.  He went on to say that Marsha was some kind of psychic reader of cards and palms.  Holding up his hand Bobby used his index finger to trace the lines on his palm, showing us his lifeline.  He grabbed Jim Crowley by the wrist to show us how different their two palms were, saying the lines had a purpose; they weren't just there by accident.  And all the while Bobby explained, he smiled harder.  Not just his mouth, but his hazel eyes, his long frame — all of Bobby seemed wide open and smiling that night.

"Marsha believes all her kids have karmic ties to me," Bobby explained.

"Would those be wide ties or thin ones?"  And Jerry the mechanic let out a big belly laugh.  A few other guys busted out laughing, too. "Bobby boy, I think you're losing it big time," said Jerry.  "In case you haven't noticed, the lady’s a little old for you.  By fifteen to twenty years, I'd say."  

Bobby didn't seem to hear.  Swiveling on the stool, with his back arched and his boot heels hooked around the footrest, he grinned more.  “I came down with this eye infection.  Probably from all the smoke.  I was soaking it with boric acid, but after a few days it wasn't getting any better.  So I'm over at TFS with Marsha.  And right there on the table is this tube of stuff.  She picks it up and tells me it belonged to her husband, was in her husband's suitcase.  That he used to get these eye infections all the time.  And that he’d want me to have it, now."

Someone whistled low.  People were looking around with their eyebrows sort of raised.

"The weird thing is," said Bobby, "with all that heat you'd have thought the stuff would've melted.  You know what?  I started using it and it cleared me right up."

The guys fell apart, laughing, pounding the counter, stomping their feet.  Probably the best laugh they'd had in a week.  Personally I was speechless.  I'd always respected Bobby Star, never pegged him as a bullshitter.  I didn't know what to make of this. 

Other things were going on, too.  A story circulated about the family of four who got shut out of the plane by a couple of minutes.  Word was they got a flat on their way to the airport.  By the time they arrived the engines were humming and the plane doors were closed.  There’s a hard and fast rule about those doors — short of someone on board having a stroke or heart attack, they don’t get reopened.  Apparently the father of the family became real irate.  Seems he pushed past the gate agent and went charging onto the field.  A couple of men chased after him, grabbed him, had to hold him back.  The pilot, spotting the commotion from the cockpit window, did an amazing thing.  He cranked open the window and yelled down that they should let the man come aboard!

At that point the wife refused; being far too shook up and definitely embarrassed.  They say the man is thanking his lucky stars they weren't on board, after all.     

I believe in luck.  I've watched people spend their whole lives chasing it down, when all along it's been right there brushing up against them.  I'm not sure what Bobby Star believed in.  

On the eighth day it was over.  All bodies identified and claimed.  The families onboard a plane to Kansas City, and points beyond.  Free, at last, to bury their dead.  

Once more we stood together on the tarmac, this time under the hot noon-day sun.  Bobby Star on my right.  As the aircraft began to taxi he broke into a wide smile, his tanned face cracking like drought soil.  Bobby was still thought of as boyish by many.  That day he looked much older, his face cut like a map of intersecting roads. 

He lifted his arm to wave at the departing plane.  I saw a flash then his arm dropped to his side.  On his finger was the largest ring imaginable.  A swirl of silver cupping a pale hunk of watery green stone.  I asked him where he got such a ring.  He held out his hand in order to give me a better look.  And a sudden display of light, brilliant like fireworks, or maybe flames, seemed to pass through him. 

"It was a present from Marsha,” he told me.  “It belonged to her husband.  It survived the crash in perfect condition."   

When I heard that I took a few steps back.

A week or two went by.  Things began to feel normal.  Planes were landing again, and the work seemed to settle everyone down.

One day I didn't see Bobby.  Or the next.  At the end of the week I asked Jim Crowley if Bobby was away on one of his annual passes.  He told me that Bobby had gone to Marsha.  That he wouldn't be coming back.  That he turned the house over to his sister and her kids.  I asked about the plates.  If Bobby took them to Marsha.  He told me that Bobby left them behind.

THE END