Chapter 9

Married! And Tina wrapped around my arm as we shook hands and smiled and received congratulations from a happy little crowd.

I shook hands with Bill Hurley and got pulled into a manhug. “Man, you don’t know how much I owe you, Bill,” I said. Next hug was from his wife, Sharon. “Congratulations, Alan,” she said.

Tina was in the middle of the office ladies receiving similar noises, and worked her way out to Bill and Sharon. Uncle Jimmy waited his turn to kiss the bride, and I shook his hand.

“Alan, I was serious about you two comin’ down for a weekend. Keep in touch with me and Bill so we can get together.” He smiled. “I feel good about today. You two will do well together.”

“Thank you, Uncle Jimmy! You don’t know how much we appreciate you helping us.”

“Yeah I do, son. I really think I do.” He smiled.

“Folks,” I announced, “this has been a great day for Tina and me. I wish we could stay and do more, but we have to get back to Tennessee today.”

Bill clapped me on the back as Tina attached herself to my arm. “You know, ya’ll bring excitement every time you hit town...”

Tina giggled. “Maybe our next visit will be sane, Mister Bill.” She kissed him on the cheek, and then when Sharon popped into range, tagged her, too. “Mizz Sharon...”

“Please, Tina. Just ‘Sharon’, okay, sweetie?” Sharon smiled.

“Okay, Sharon, tell Billy and Bridget that I’m sorry they were in school today and we didn’t get to say ‘bye’. But we’ll be back.”

Sharon smiled. “Oh, I know, Tina. They’ll be sad that they missed this.” She sighed. “I need to get back to school myself. I so much enjoyed meeting you two.”

Sharon left, and Bill did taxi service, running us by the motel to retrieve our luggage and then to the airport. We gave Bill a tour of our little plane and waved bye as he took off back to work. Before I climbed in the plane, I flipped my phone open and punched up my boss’s number.

“This is Carl,” he answered.

“Carl! Alan. We’re getting ready to take off in Louisiana. We’ll be home in four hours or so. Any problems?”

“Nope! Not on my end. How about you?”

Tina was in earshot. “I’m the proud possessor of a seventeen year old wife, Carl. Tina and I got married.”

“Congratulations, I guess, bud,” he said.

I chuckled. “No guessing to it. We would’ve waited until she was eighteen, but it was gonna happen anyway. Tina, say hi to Carl.”

Tina took the phone. “Hi, Mister Carl. I’m bringing him back to you. Thanks for letting him loose like this, on short notice.”

“Not a problem, Missus Addison. You two take care of yourselves. Tell ‘im I’ll see him Monday.”

“‘Kay,” she said. “Bye!” she handed me back my phone. “Carl says see ya Monday.”

After the pre-flight ritual, she started to walk around to the passenger side of the plane. “Oh, no, little girl. You do the left seat today!”

“Serious?!?” she squealed.

“It’s not that big a deal. First, the plane controls equally well from either side. The left seat just has a better view of the instruments. Second, we’re gonna take off, climb to seventy-five hundred feet and head northeast. Nothing fancy. No maneuvers to speak of, unless you want to do some, and in four hours we’ll see our airport.”

“You make it sound simple. Okay, then,” she said. “If you say so. I mean, you’re my husband an’ I gotta be all obedient and submissive an’ all that...” Her eyes laughed.

A few minutes later our wheels left the Louisiana runway. We climbed straight out, looked around, then banked left to our final course. I guided her into setting up a neat ‘cruise-climb’, cranking away miles as we gained altitude, and then we leveled off. I helped her trim us up. “That’s pretty much it. A little care that you don’t get too low or too high. Or too far left or too far right.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Wow! I’m doin’ this!”

“If you get tired or confused, let me know.” I folded my arms. Okay, I unfolded them and reached over and stroked that auburn hair, held oddly in place by the headband of her headset. “You married me. You REALLY married me.”

She glanced over, smiling. “Yeah I did, Alan. One of those forever things. You...”

“I will watch the stars blink out in the night sky before I leave you, Tina.”

“The way it should be.”

The seat of my pants felt a surge. “You’re cruising, baby. Just tiny little pressures. If you’re low, a little back pressure and you’ll see the speed drop a tiny bit and you’ll climb. Same thing if you’re high. Or left or right. Tiny changes. And if you keep having to correct high or low, a little turn on the trim will get rid of some of that.”

“Uh-huh. Just new, that’s all...” she smiled.

We ate up miles at a satisfactory pace, crossing the Mississippi River angling across Mississippi and into Alabama. Our destination in Tennessee was half an hour ahead. I talked Tina through pulling back the power and lowering the nose to keep the speed up for our descent. A radio call on the ‘Unicom’ frequency alerted anyone who might care of our intent to land. Nobody cared. Traffic was sparse at little rural airports during the week.

Okay, ONE person cared. “Uh, Cessna 6-5-6-7 Golf, this is Tulla County Airport. No known traffic.”

“That’s Mister Charlie,” Tina said.

“Good! We can top off the tanks before we put her up for the day.” I thumbed the ‘transmit’ switch. “Tulla County, 6-7 Golf. We’re gonna need fuel service in ten,” I said.

Radio broke squelch. “Roger, 6-7 Golf. You know the drill.”

Tina followed me through a standard landing pattern and the wheels touched down with only the tiniest of bounces. “Okay,” I told my wife, “Steer with your feet. No faster than a fast walk. Pay attention to your wingtips. You’re forty feet wide.”

I followed her on the controls, giving a couple of helping nudges here and there. As we approached the fuel pumps, I took over. She sighed in relief. “I thought you were gonna try and make me do that,” she said.

“You learn at YOUR pace. You’ve done great so far. Now, to stop this thing, pull the mixture back all the way. Then when it stops, turn the mags off. That’s the key there.”

Our engine stopped as Charlie sauntered out of his office. He was amused to see Tina climbing out of the left door.

“You don’t waste time, do you, Alan?” he said.

“Thought she should get a taste of it from the left seat,” I laughed. “I know we can’t log those hours, but practice is practice.”

Tina was beaming. We topped off the tanks. Charlie and I pushed our little chariot back into its nest after Tina pulled my pickup out of the hangar. When we walked into the office, Tina’s eyes scanned his display case.

“Student pilot manual. I need that, Alan!”

“Put it on the card with the gas, Charlie.”

“You know, Alan, she’s got to log twenty hours with an instructor, forty hours total, and what isn’t with the instructor has to be solo...”

“Yeah, I know.”

“But that doesn’t stop you from flyin’ with her. Just means that when she gets with an instructor, she’s gonna probably have more practice.”

“Sorta what I figured. You got a problem with doing it that way?”

“No,” he said, “but I’ve never did a student in a 182. I know a little 152, over at regional, that a guy’s trying to sell.” (A Cessna 152 was a popular two-seat trainer.)

Tina said, “TWO planes?”

“Remember when we talked about that, baby?” I turned to Charlie. “Okay, buddy, that 152, what kind of deal is it?”

“Pretty good one, actually. Just about what I imagine YOU want to do. He bought the thing to get his hours in, now he’s commercial and all the other tickets, and he doesn’t need the plane. He bought it for fifteen, he’ll take fifteen. And when Miss Tina’s licensed, you can turn around and sell it for fifteen. All her license costs is fuel and an instructor.”

I looked at Tina. “If you’re serious...”

Squeal!

“She’s serious,” Charlie laughed.

“When can we look at it?” I asked.

“Well, if we lock up this office, it’s a forty-minute drive. And you’re going in that direction anyway.”

“We’ll follow you,” I said.

Tina skipped out to the truck.

Forty minutes later we were looking at the little trainer.

“It’s so little,” Tina said. “I thought ours was little. THIS is little.”

Charlie said, “This was the most popular trainer around. Still probably is. Burns half the gas of yours. Weighs half as much. Goes two-thirds as fast. More responsive.”

“You know this plane?” I asked.

“Yep,” Charlie said. “I finished the annual on ‘er last month. Engine’s got three hundred and eighty hours on a complete overhaul. She’s used, for sure, but like I said, it’s a good buy. And good resale.”

“Fifteen thousand’s a good price,” I said. Call the guy. Tell ‘im to get with Brad. We’ll make it happen.”

“Boy, you’re a trusting soul,” Charlie said.

“You’ve been good so far,” I said. “How much do you get if you sell this thing?”

“Ten percent,” Charlie admitted.

“Yeah, and if I’d approached the owner and talked him down fifteen hundred bucks, I’d still have to pay YOU a thousand to do the inspection. I’d rather just pay him fifteen and let him pay you.”

“You wanna fly it?” Charlie asked.

“That’d be nice,” I laughed. I turned to Tina. “Babe, you wanna wait here?”

“I’ll sit in the truck while you’re gone,” she smiled.

She walked with us as we preflighted the little red and white plane. “Just about like ours, except littler,” she said.

“Yep! Pretty much.”

Forty minutes later Charlie and I were taxiing back to the tie-down and there was another car next to my pickup truck. A guy was standing there with his arms folded, talking to Tina.

“That’s the owner,” Charlie said. I called him while we were on the road.

He and Tina met us when the engine stopped. “Alan, this is Dexter Stevens. It’s his plane. Dexter, this is my husband,” I caught the extra smile with that admission, “Alan Addison.”

“Hi, Dexter. Heard you just got all your tickets.

“Yessir,” he said. “Looks like I’m in agricultural aviation now.”

“Great!” I said.

“Meh, it’s a living. I’m hoping for something in the airlines, but this’ll put money in the bank until then. You wanna buy my little bird?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Tina’s gotta learn to fly...”

“And you’ve got a 182. She told me. This’ll do fine. And when she’s finished...”

“Just like you did,” I said. “Can you get with our lawyer to do the transaction? Charlie said fifteen...”

“I’m not going below fifteen, Alan.” Dexter looked serious.

“I realize that’s a good price. I do my research. And Charlie says he just did the annual.”