Chapter 17: Teach Me

San Luis Obispo Regional Airport, California

December 12, 2003

It was 4:10 PM, near the end of a chilly, blustery late autumn day on the central coast of California. The sky was clear and visibility was greater than twenty miles but the wind was blowing at twelve knots with gusts to eighteen. Fortunately, it was a prevailing wind so it was blowing almost straight in to Runway 29, where it would actually help an aircraft take off instead of hinder it. For this reason, Jake let Laura keep the controls for the first phase of the flight instead of taking them himself.

“Checklist complete,” Laura said after finishing the configuration of the aircraft for takeoff. They were at the hold line, waiting for a United Express Bombardier CRJ 700 that had just landed after a flight from Portland, Oregon to clear the runway.

“I concur,” Jake said, feeling only slightly nervous this time around. He had been teaching Laura how to fly and, most importantly, land the Avanti over the past month, gradually introducing more and more responsibilities to her. None of her time behind the controls of the aircraft were official (in fact, it was quite illegal), so none of it went into her logbook, but it was invaluable experience if she should ever have to take the controls of the plane in an emergency situation where Jake was incapacitated. Obviously, taking off, as long as they were not in some real life Hollywood over-the-top action film scenario, would never be an emergency, but it gave her great training on controlling and stabilizing the plane. Learning to fly it, in other words.

Avanti November-Charlie was cleared for takeoff by the SLO tower controller. Their flight would be VFR to KSNA, better known as John Wayne International Airport in Orange County, the nearest airport to Matt’s San Juan Capistrano home that the Avanti could land at. Jake acknowledged the controller and Laura throttled up a bit, turning them onto the runway. After a final check of the instruments and the airspace around them, she throttled up and they began to roll, picking up speed.

Thanks to the moderate wind blowing directly into them, there was no V1 speed on this takeoff, as the point where it would be too late to stop in an emergency was beyond the speed of takeoff. Right up to the moment they lifted off, it would still be possible to reject takeoff and stop before running out of runway to use. VR was reduced as well. Normally 90-95 knots on this runway, depending mostly on weight, it was now 85 knots, although, realistically, they could have safely rotated at 80 knots.

Jake said the magic word and Laura pulled back on the yoke. They climbed into the sky. Laura had done enough takeoffs in the Avanti by this point (six of them, not including the unofficial takeoffs she had done before becoming a pilot) to verify her own positive rate of climb and retract the landing gear without assistance or prompting from Jake. She settled into a 3500 feet per minute ascent and followed the yellow line on the GPS. She turned fifteen degrees left to stay on course and then, as Morro Rock came into view and her airspeed was pegged at 170, she retracted the flaps and let her speed increase to 250 knots and her climb to settle at three thousand feet per minute. She turned 94 degrees left at Morro Rock and continued to climb as they went out over the ocean temporarily. When they reached fifteen thousand five hundred feet, she leveled off and trimmed the aircraft. She then activated the autopilot, keeping them on course at the proper altitude and speed.

“That was fucking perfect,” Jake told her with a smile, proud enough of her to throw out an F-bomb.

She smiled right back at him, knowing she had nailed it this time. Every other takeoff and climb-out she had done had involved at least one mistake that Jake had been required to either point out or intervene in. This was her first perfect. “It’s almost like I’m learning something here, right?”

“Right,” he said, giving her left leg an affectionate pat.

The lessons she was receiving from Jake were not structured like formal lessons. And Jake was most certainly not a certified flight instructor, not even for basic aircraft, let alone a twin-engine turboprop, pressurized, high-altitude capable, high speed business aircraft. But Jake could teach skills and procedures, which was what Laura needed to learn to achieve her goal. The reason she had become a pilot in the first place was so she would have the necessary skills to take over and land the Avanti if Jake ever became incapacitated. He was teaching her to do just that and his lessons focused heavily on the basic flying skills of piloting the aircraft along with judicious teaching on the use of the flight management computer, the autopilot (particularly the ILS landing system), and the programming and use of the GPS. This knowledge could take her all the way down to 250 feet above a runway, perfectly lined up for landing. And even if there was no ILS airport nearby, she would be able to hand fly the plane through a descent and landing on her own (with a little help from the GPS and an ATC person).

“I’m a little nervous about flying into such a busy airport,” she told him now. “Are we sure this is a good idea at this point?”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Jake said, hiding his own nervousness at the thought. “If you ever have to apply these skills for real, that’s likely the sort of place you’ll be landing at. Of course, you will have declared an emergency and they would clear out all the traffic in the area because you would be a menace to everything in the sky.”

“Birds too?” she asked with a smile. She knew that throwing out the line from Airplane was expected of her.

Jake smiled back. “Yes, birds too,” he replied and they both had a laugh. “Seriously though. If you can do this, you can do anything. It’ll be just like landing anywhere else, easier even because the runway is both wider and longer than you’re used to.”

“Okayyy,” she said, using a Caydee-ism. “That makes sense.”

“Of course, the approach into and through the pattern is going to be a little more complex.”

“It will?”

He nodded. “Considerably. They’ll most likely be calling and having you adjust your airspeed so they can squeeze you in between a couple of airliners in the pattern. It’s no big deal. Just adjust the speed setting to whatever they say and the autopilot will do the rest. That goes for any course changes as well.”

“Course changes?”

“That happens a lot too at bigger commercial airports with lots of traffic,” he said. “They’ll have you fly a different pattern than what you’ve programmed into the flight computer. Again, no big deal. Just switch the autopilot to ‘heading hold’ instead of ‘GPS hold’ and dial in whatever heading they give. The autopilot will make the turns for you.”

“This is starting to seem very complex, sweetie,” she said.

“You’ll do fine,” Jake assured her. “And remember, if it were an actual emergency, they would vector you straight in. No landing pattern at all, so you’ll need to know how to do the course changes ordered.”

He took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said, chewing her lip a little. “I can do this.”

“Of course you can,” he said. “I wouldn’t let you do it otherwise.”

Laura handled the initial descent well, sticking to using the autopilot. She brought them down to nine thousand feet and slowed to 250 knots. This she had done several times before. It was as they approached the airspace around John Wayne and contacted SoCal approach, the regional ATC, that things became more complicated. Jake told them they were a VFR flight with intention of landing at KSNA. They acknowledged this and directed them to slow to 220 knots and turn right to 185 degrees. Jake acknowledged and Laura switched the autopilot to heading mode instead of GPS mode. She programmed the turn and the reduction in speed. The plane complied with her directions.

They were directed to a waypoint east of the airport and then another north of that. Between the two, they were directed to descend to 2500 feet and reduce speed to 180 knots. This served to slip them in behind a Southwest Airlines 737 three minutes ahead of them and an American Airlines A-320 four minutes behind them. After the second waypoint they were ordered to turn to 185 and contact John Wayne tower. This put them headed more or less toward Runway 20R and about five miles out. They could see the 737 ahead of and below them on final approach.

“All right,” Jake told her. “Change the computer so it brings up the ILS frequency on the nav radio, then switch the autopilot to ILS. We should be getting signal from it.”

“Right,” she said.

Jake contacted the tower and was told they were clear to land. They were then given the wind conditions. It was blowing at 11 knots out of 263. Jake thanked them and then made sure they were receiving the ILS signal. They were.

“Now, just keep an eye out for other traffic,” he told her, “keep an eye on your instruments, and wait for capture on the ILS. You know what to do after that.”

“I do,” she said, her eyes tracking the sky and then going back to her instruments. Ahead of them, the 737 was about to touch down.

The nose of the aircraft dipped down about three miles out and then engine noise decreased. They were locked onto the localizer of the ILS and it was guiding the plane down toward the runway. Jake reported this to ATC and their clearance to land was confirmed once more. Laura dialed their speed back to 170 and pulled the flap lever down to the first setting. The motor whirred and they both felt the deceleration of the plane.

“Okay,” she said. “On the glideslope, tracking normally, speed at one-seven-zero. Lowering the gear.” She pulled that lever and more motors began to whir.

“Three green on the gear,” Jake told her. They were now fifteen hundred feet above the ground below. Laura pulled the flap lever again, extended them another five degrees. They slowed even more, the speed setting now at 130 knots.

At one thousand feet above the ground, Laura dialed the speed back to 90 knots and pulled the flaps to the fully extended position. The plane slowed and continued to sink, following the glideslope. She could have taken manual control at this point and landed without problem—she had almost two dozen touch and goes of the Avanti done over three separate flights at Hanford Municipal Airport in Kings County under her belt—but Jake wanted her to let the ILS take her as low as she could go with it before taking over.

They reached 250 feet and she disconnected the autopilot, taking control. She touched down smoothly twenty seconds later. Once they had slowed a bit, she retracted the flaps and applied the brakes. She exited the runway at the second such place to do so and Jake switched to the ground controller, who gave them directions on how to get to the general aviation terminal.

Jake took over at this point. Laura did not need to know how to navigate on the ground at a large airport. If this had been an actual emergency and she had safely landed, she would have been directed to either stop on the runway itself or to turn off onto the first exit from the runway if it was safe to do so and stop there.

“You did good, hon,” Jake told her. “I didn’t have to touch the controls or input into the autopilot a single time.”

She smiled. “That was kind of scary,” she said, “but it was fun.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” he replied, smiling back at her.

Matt and Kim were waiting inside the terminal for them, each with a travel bag in their possession. Greetings were exchanged. Laura gave her usual listless, emotionless hug to Matt and a much warmer one to Kim, who she rather liked despite her past and present professions and her choice of life partner.

“Jimbo still staying with you?” Jake asked the guitarist, referring to Matt’s personal paramedic, who had been at his side for the entire Intemperance tour and had been living in Matt’s house for past six years or so.

“Yep,” Matt replied. “It’s still nice having him around. Gives me fuckin’ peace of mind, you know what I’m saying?”

“Not really,” said Jake, who had never felt the need to have a paramedic within thirty seconds of him at all times. But then he had never had the sort of health problems that Matt suffered from either. But then again, he had never used as much cocaine as Matt and had stopped using it entirely back in 1990, so therefore he had never developed those sorts of problems in the first place.

“He’s there to stay,” Matt said. “I even put the motherfucker in my will.”

“You have a will?” Laura asked, surprised.

“Fuckin’ A,” Matt said. “I had it made out just after my fuckin’ heart took a shit on me and tried to kill my ass. I don’t want any of my shit going to my fuckin’ parents or my fuckin’ brother and sister after I bite the big one. Fuck them. They got enough of their own shit.”

“That’s actually very responsible of you, Matt,” Jake morbidly pointed out.

“I have my fuckin’ moments of that,” Matt said. “Enough talk about wills and fuckin’ dying though. Kim and I already burned some bud out in the car before we came in. I figured that was the safest place to do it at this fuckin’ airport where there’s a bunch of fuckin’ cops walking around everywhere. Jake, I know you don’t burn before you fly—which I don’t fuckin’ get because it seems to me like that would be one of the coolest fuckin’ times to do it—but Teach, I still got my pipe and some bud in my travel bag if you want to step out to the car with me and grab a few quick hits.”

“Uh ... thanks for the offer, Matt,” she said, “but I can wait until we get home and Caydee is in bed.”

“You sure?” he asked. “It’s really good shit. More of that fuckin’ medicinal weed. I got a solid connection that scores it for me.”

“I’m sure,” she said politely.

“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug.

Fifteen minutes later, Matt and Kim and their bags had been weighed, the bags stowed in the cargo compartment, the flight plan filed, and they were taxiing to the runway for takeoff. Jake would remain in complete control of the aircraft for this flight. They had decided at the beginning of her lessons that they would only do them when it was just the two of them in the plane.

They were back on the ground at SLO at 5:35 PM, at Kingsley Manor at 5:55, just in time for dinner. It was chicken marsala tonight, one of Westin’s specialties. Jake introduced Matt and Kim to Westin and Sean. Jake had briefed the guitarist and the porn queen on the flight home regarding the fact that his housekeeper and his chef were a gay couple. Matt promised not to mention it, make any innuendo about it, or otherwise say anything derogatory about gay people. Jake wondered if this was a promise he was even capable of keeping. He did okay on the introductions, however. He was polite to them, shook their hands, thanked them when they praised his skill with the guitar, and made no mention of faggots, queers, dick-smokers, rump-rangers, fudge packers, or anything else regarding male homosexuality. For Matt, that was an amazing feat of willpower and discipline. Jake hoped he could keep it up for the entire visit.

After dinner, while Westin was cleaning up the dishes and kitchen and Sean made his way back to their quarters, the rest of them went to the entertainment room. Jake declared the bar to be open but also declared he was not making everyone’s drinks (except for Celia’s—she was playing with Cap on the floor, wearing him out for his later bedtime).

After pouring himself a Jack and Coke that was well over half Jack, and after Jake poured himself some Glenlivet on the rocks and delivered some chardonnay to Celia, Matt tried to jump right into the meat of the matter.

“Why don’t we go to your composition room, burn a little, and then start working on what we each got?” he suggested.

Jake shook his head. “Not tonight,” he said. “It’s Friday night, I just flew to Orange County and back after a long day in the studio, and I just want to relax for now. We’ll start working on shit in the morning.”

“All right,” Matt said, disappointed. “But not too early, okay?”

“Saturday morning breakfast is nine o’clock,” Jake said. “If you want to eat some, be out here by that time. Otherwise, sleep as long as you like. We’ll have all day to work on music.”

“I’ll be up for breakfast,” Kim said. “Is Westin making it?”

“I’ll be making it,” Jake said. “Sean and Westin both have weekends off.”

“Oh,” she said, a little disappointment in her voice. “I’ll still be up for it. You make a pretty good breakfast too, Jake.”

“Yeah, pretty good,” Jake said with a chuckle. He took another swallow of his drink.

Westin finished cleaning up and popped into the entertainment room to let Jake, Laura, and Celia know that he was done for the night and heading back to their quarters.

“Okay,” Jake said. “Thanks, Wes. Good dinner tonight.”

“Yeah,” agreed Matt. “That was premo fuckin’ chow you laid down.”

“Thank you,” Westin said.

Everyone wished him a good weekend and he left, making the hike across to the servant’s quarters.

“Is this where they start sucking on each other’s fuckin’ schlongs and tapping into each other’s asses?” Matt asked.

Laura glared at him. “Matt,” she said firmly, “while we are loose with our language around Caydee and Cap, we are not that loose. F-bombs, we have no problem with. Racial or homophobic slurs of any kind, we do.”

Matt actually had the decency to look ashamed. “Sorry, Teach,” he told her. “I’ll watch my fuckin’ language around the kids from here on out.”

“Thank you,” Laura said. She then took a large slug from her cognac.

They broke up into male/female groups (except for Cap, who stayed with the women). Matt and Jake shot a couple games of eightball, Jake easily taking both of them. They then played some darts. Jake beat him at this as well. They talked of unimportant things as they played. Jake had two Scotch on the rocks during this while Matt had four Jack and Cokes and had to go outside once to smoke a cigarette. Jake did not join him outside when he did this as he could not stand the smell of cigarette smoke and it was cold out there, at least by central coast of California standards, with an icy wind blowing in off the ocean.

At 7:30, Celia took Cap and Caydee into the master suite to get them bathed. Caydee took a shower while Cap took a bath in the large tub (he was, so far, a fan of baths and splashed and played enthusiastically during them). After both were changed into pajamas, they came back out for guitar and sing time. This would be the first time that Matt and Kim witnessed Caydee playing her guitar.

“Do War Pigs,” Jake suggested to her as an opening number.

“Fuckin’ A,” she agreed.

The little redhead settled in with her half-sized guitar in the correct position, put her pick between the thumb and index fingers of her right hand, grabbed the fretboard with her left hand, and then launched into the tune, playing out the opening to perfection. Matt was amazed, especially when she started singing out the lyrics in exact timing with the notes she was playing. Her little voice was quite different than Ozzy Osbourne’s, obviously, but she still managed to convey the emotion that this was an anti-war song. The only accompaniment she had for the number was Jake playing out a little percussion by tapping his hands on the back of his own guitar.

Matt was very impressed. “That was fuckin’ badass!” he told Caydee when she was done.

“Fuckin’ A,” she agreed with a smile. “That’s one of my favorite songs.”

“She’s come a long way since the last time we saw her play,” Kim said. “She was still on the harmonica then.”

“She got the guitar last Christmas,” Laura said. “Since then, Jake and C have been teaching her.”

“She knows all the basic chords now,” Celia said, “and she can play them and change from one to the other without having to look at her fingers.”

“I got calluses on my fingers,” Caydee said proudly. “Just like Daddy and See-Ya do.”

“Let’s do something else, Caydee girl,” Jake suggested. “Something with two guitars in it.”

“Dirty Deeds?” she asked hopefully. They had been working on that one for the last month or so.

“Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” Jake confirmed. “Like always, you play the chords and I’ll pick up the notes and the solo. I’ll sing, you backup sing until the last verse. That one is all yours.”

“Sounds good, Daddy,” she said.

“Fire when ready,” Jake said, positioning his own guitar and pick.

Caydee fired away, strumming out the primary riff without intro or fanfare. After she went through it three times, Jake began to sing about how if you were experiencing negative issues with the principal of your educational facility and you wanted to rectify the situation in a non-legal manner without having to resort to providing sexual favors, you should call a certain number. When they came to the chorus, both Jake and Caydee sang in unison, advertising that criminal acts, up to and including murder, could be arranged for a better than reasonable price. For the end of the chorus, Caydee sang the hook line solo three times and then Jake started the second verse, the verse concerning what to do if one’s significant other was committing infidelity with a close friend. The answer, of course, was to make a simple phone call.

After the second verse Jake, who had only been doing flourishes to this point, played the guitar solo the best he could on an acoustic while Caydee continued to play the riff to support him. That led into the final verse, which Caydee sang out, the one about what to do if you had a female significant other who enjoyed vexing you without letup through most of every twenty-four hour period of darkness and light. One only had to make a phone call, was the answer. After that, they went through the outro, alternating who was singing about the various services offered by that inexpensive fee-for-service, non-taxed agency. They then wrapped it up, getting actual applause from Matt and Kim.

“That was badass too!” Matt said. He turned to Kim. “Maybe we should have a fuckin’ kid after all.”

“In your dreams,” Kim replied with a roll of her eyes.

They did three more songs. Celia played notes and sang Tequila Sunrise with Caydee providing the chords. Celia then played the guitar for Caydee while she sang Bad Moon Rising. And then, for the finale, Jake and Caydee did one of their favorite and most complex tunes, the duet Shoot High Aim Low, while Laura played her flute to accompany and do the solo.

“She’s even got the tempo changes down,” Matt said, amazed after seeing the final number.

“Fuckin’ A,” Jake said. “She’s not a six-year old playing with a toy, she’s a musician and a singer now.”

“Daddy says it’s in my genes,” Caydee said seriously.

“Or it could be God’s great plan,” Jake added with a smile.

Caydee looked at him. “I thought you said God was bullshit,” she said.

“I said he was ‘probably’ bullshit,” Jake corrected. “And that was not for your ears to hear. When you’re old enough, you can make up your own mind about what bullshit to believe in.”

“What if it’s all bullshit?” she asked.

“An interesting question,” Jake said. “And that may very well be the answer if Occam and his razor have anything to say about it. No matter what kind of bullshit we’re dealing with on this issue, however, we still need to keep living our lives like we should, because our lives here and now could be the only thing that’s really real.”

“I never thought of it like that,” Caydee said, pondering that.

“That’s fuckin’ deep, Jake,” said Matt, who had snuck out to take a few hits from his pipe while the kids were being bathed.

“I have my moments,” Jake said. “Now, I think it’s about story time and then bedtime, isn’t it?”

It was. Caydee gave everyone a hug and a kiss on the cheek and then she, Laura, Celia, and Cap headed for Caydee’s room for story time.

“Your little girl is very smart,” Kim said once they were gone.

“She is,” Jake agreed. “Almost too smart for her own good. She’s figured out why some of the kids in her kindergarten class refuse to play with her or even talk to her.”

“Why is that?” Kim asked.

“Because she’s my daughter and their parents told them to stay away from her,” Jake said. “She knows she lives in a notorious family and that not everyone approves of how we live—or at least how they imagine we live. They don’t want our Satanism and our orgies and our wife-beating rubbing off on their kids.”

“Fuck those assholes,” Matt said. “Their fuckin’ little rugrats too. They’re just fuckin’ jealous that you’re living up here on this cliff, flying your own plane around, pulling in millions of fuckin’ dollars every quarter, and scoring more puss than they can ever imagine. Fuckin’ haters gotta hate.”

“In your own profane way, Matt, you’ve kind of hit the nail on the head there,” Jake told him.

“Fuckin’ A, I did,” he replied.

Laura came back after fifteen minutes. Celia did not. Kim asked where she was.

“She’s feeding Cap his nightly boob,” Laura told her. “He’s down to just the night boob and the morning boob now. The rest of the day he drinks pumped milk and we’ve started introducing him to rice cereal and the fruit baby food.”

“He’ll be losing the hogans completely before too long,” Matt said sadly. “What a shame for him.”

“Let’s not go down that path, Matt,” Laura said tiredly. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, a little disappointed. He really wanted to talk about the beaner bitch’s hogans.

“Thank you,” she said. “Now, you said something earlier about some medicinal shit you have. How about we try some of that out now?”

“Oh ... yeah!” Matt said, instantly animated. “I’ll roll us a fuckin’ doob. Where do we go? Outside on the deck?”

“It’s a little chilly out there,” Laura said. “How about Jake’s composition room? That’s the only place in the house where we do that. It has really powerful ventilation fans.”

“Designed that myself,” Jake said proudly, standing up. “Knew I would want to toke up while I was composing. It also has twice as many electrical outlets as any other room.”

Matt went and grabbed his stash. When he returned, Jake began leading them toward the composition room.

“What about your other old lady?” Matt asked as they made the trip. “Shouldn’t we wait for her?”

“She’s breastfeeding still, remember?” Laura said.

Matt was genuinely confused by this. “What the fuck difference does that make?” he wanted to know.

“It gets into the breast milk,” Jake explained.

Matt still did not understand why that would be considered a bad thing—it would just make the fuckin’ kid more mellow, wouldn’t it?—but he let the subject drop.

They all went inside and Jake closed the door behind them. Matt sat in Jake’s chair and pulled out his stash. Jake opened the cigar box on the desk and provided him with rolling papers, a plastic tray, an expired credit card, and a small pair of scissors. Matt used the scissors to cut up one of the buds into the tray. He then pulled out one of the rolling papers, folded it in half, and then set the paper down on the desk. Using the narrow side of the credit card as a spatula, he scooped up the marijuana and poured it into the middle of the rolling paper without spilling so much as a crumb. In a mere ten seconds, he had a nice, tightly rolled fatty ready for human consumption. He found a lighter in the stash box and then handed it and the joint over to Laura.

“Fire us up, Teach,” he told her.

“Thank you,” she replied. “I think I will.”

She lit the joint and took a large hit of it. She then passed it to Jake, who did the same. He passed it to Kim who passed it to Matt, who passed it back to Laura. Matt was right. It was really good shit. Not too much of an odor to it and the high seemed cleaner, mellower than illicitly produced marijuana. Jake made mention of this to Matt.

“Fuckin’ A it’s mellower,” he said. “This shit is not grown in a back bedroom of a duplex in a shitty neighborhood or on some fuckin’ hillside up north. This shit is grown in a legal greenhouse in LA County and educated, professional fuckin’ horticulturists oversee every aspect of production. They’ve fucked with the genes in the plants, making the shit more potent and getting rid of the part that gives you the fuckin’ paranoids. They monitor the watering and CO2 levels as the shit grows. This might very well be the best fuckin’ pot on the planet.”

“No shit?” Laura said with a thoughtful smile on her face. She was rather enjoying her mellow high as well. Matt was right. There was no underlying paranoia or anxiety that needed to be kept at bay while the drug was peaking. It really was incredibly mellow but incredibly potent too.

“No shit,” Matt said. “Can’t you feel the difference?”

“What’s it cost?” Jake wanted to know, though the actual price meant little to him.

“It sells for sixty bucks an eighth in the dispensary,” Matt told him. “My connection works in the warehouse where they package and distribute the shit. He lets me have it for ten dollars above wholesale of forty bucks an eighth.”