The Man Who Ate the 747 (11 page)

“Question, Wally. Over here. Why are you doing this? Why are you eating the airplane?”

Wally didn’t answer. Willa was right there in the front row.

He grinned at her, then cast his eyes over this world of newfound friends. He took a gulp, burped.

“What’s it taste like?” someone shouted.

“Not bad,” he said. “A bit metallic. Reminds me of diet soda. Like Tab.”

Then he drained the glass with a few more glugs, finishing off the 46-blade fan assembly of the 747.

I
n her whole life, Rose had never seen so many flowers.

Even at the hospital maternity ward, there were never so many bouquets. These weren’t the familiar carnations and pompons from Superior Floral. These were showy, expensive arrangements of strange, exotic blossoms, flown in from big cities, then driven all the way from Lincoln or Omaha.

She primped the flowers and pushed her nose into the roses. They smelled fancy even in Wally’s grubby living room. She poked her finger down into the stems to test the water level.

Rose had stopped by to check up on him,
as she often did on her way to the hospital. She had brought along one of her prize angel food cakes, top blue-ribbon winner at the State Fair in Lincoln in 1986. Wally was in the kitchen fixing lunch. Arf snoozed at his feet.

“You hear about Shrimp?” she asked.

“What?” Wally said.

“Got blown off the road again. State Patrol says it’s going to yank his badge unless he puts on some weight real fast.”

“Well, I saw him eat three Herfburgers at the inn yesterday,” Wally said.

“Jeez. Is he trying to gain weight or kill himself?”

They both laughed. Rose opened the card on the newest bouquet. It came from a TV anchorwoman in New York. It said she admired Wally, thought he was cute, wanted to know his innermost thoughts, asked if he’d fly to New York City, all expenses paid, for an exclusive interview.

The phone rang.

“Please hold for—” a peppy person said, too fast for Rose to understand. Then she heard an instantly recognizable voice.

“Hi there,” a sultry woman said. “Who’s this?”

“Rose Lofgreen,” she said.

“I’m calling from New York and just wanted to make sure Mr. Chubb got our basket of fruit.”

“Yup. Got it right here.”

“Well, I hope it mixes well with the airplane.” She
laughed. “So tell me, Rose, how can I convince him to go on my show?”

Rose looked toward the kitchen. Wally was biting into a peanut butter and wing torsion box sandwich.

“I don’t think he really wants to talk to anyone right now,” she said. “He’s happy just the way things are.”

“Are you his girlfriend? You’re a very lucky lady—”

“No, I’m not,” Rose said. “He doesn’t have a girlfriend.”

And that was the shame of it. Wally needed a woman in his life. Needed
her.
Rose hadn’t always felt this way about him. Like everyone else, she once thought he was a great big goofball. Then she sat next to him in church one day and heard him sing “Amazing Grace.” He was too loud and way off-key, but the hymn rumbled out of him from some deep place. It touched her. He got to her again at the 4-H potluck picnic when he ate nearly a whole tub of her potato salad. Later, when her marriage to Bad Bob unraveled, Wally was the one who sat her down at Jughead’s and told her she’d be better off happy and alone than miserable with a bully.

Rose’s divorce taught her a lot—mostly that love could start with a spark, a twirl on the dance floor, but could grow only with understanding and acceptance of the other. That true love meant knowing someone the way they know themselves. And that was why she could watch over Wally, love Wally,
even as he pined for Willa. It wasn’t easy. Especially now with an acre of flowers in his living room, each petal, every single bloom, encouraging him to keep going down exactly the wrong road.

“No girlfriend? But I thought—” the TV woman’s voice broke into her thoughts.

“I’ll add your name to the list.” Rose made a note in the composition book that was filling up with messages. She printed the woman’s name next to Ted Koppel and Geraldo Rivera.

“Who’s called already?” the woman asked.

“The phone hasn’t stopped ringing.”

“Should I fly out to meet him in person? A quiet dinner, maybe?” Her voice was soft and flirty.

“Not really,” Rose said. “He’s not that kind of guy, and you probably won’t like the food.”

“Well, please tell him I’d do anything to have him on the show.”

“Okay, will do.”

And she hung up.

“Who was that?” Wally asked, entering the living room.

“Just another reporter.”

“Has Willa called?”

“No,” Rose said. “She hasn’t called.”

“Did you see her?”

“No.” She knew her tone was snippy; there was no hiding it.

“Hey? What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been here all day, getting the door every ten
minutes for another box of chocolates from some celebrity. I’ve answered phone calls from Brazil, Japan, and Germany. I’m tired, and I’ve got to go to work now. My shift is about to start.”

“Thanks for helping,” Wally said. He put his thick hand on her shoulder. “You want to take some of the flowers?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want your flowers.”

Rose stuck her arms through the sleeves of her white nurse’s coat, buttoned it across her chest. No matter what she did—no matter how much she cared—no matter how many cakes she baked—he didn’t notice her at all. She was invisible. There was no use.

“I better get to work.” She lifted herself on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. His beard was prickly and he smelled like damp earth.

She might as well have kissed Arf.

Willa rolled down her window and drove slowly along East Third. A crowd had gathered in front of
The Express.
The guys who usually hung out at the Gas ’N Shop or the B.S. Café at the grain elevator in Webber had converged on the curb to watch all the TV reporters. The townsfolk were reveling in all the attention, beaming innocence to anyone with a mind to exploit them.

Normally she was proud to be a journalist, but today her fellow reporters looked like predators, hunting for delicious bits of flesh and blood, alert for the
next story even as they picked this one clean. They didn’t give a hoot about the town and its people. This was about survival, their survival. She would have no part in helping any of them.

She took a right at the end of the block, parked, and walked up the narrow alley where she could watch the circus, unnoticed. She listened to a blonde with a bad dye job overemoting into the camera.

“We’re here where the mystery woman works,” she was saying. “All we know about Willa Wyatt is that she’s the editor of this little paper. She was born in this town, educated at the University of Nebraska.”

The reporter stopped midsentence.

“This wind is killing my hair,” she said. “Let’s do it again. Take two.”

The mystery woman.
Yes, indeed, she definitely needed to remember to be mysterious. The thought of it made her laugh out loud and cringe at the same time. Reporters always chased the juiciest angle. Willa slipped down the alley and entered the Superior Publishing Company building through the loading dock door.

“Where’ve you been?” Iola said, looking up from her desk. “You’ve gotten 35 telephone calls.
The New York Times
wants to talk with you.”

“How’s tomorrow’s paper?” Willa asked, walking to the pasteup room. The pages were there, arranged neatly on the layout tables, awaiting her approval. There was the huge 60-point headline:
SUPERIOR MAN EATS 747 FOR WORLD RECORD.
She had to put
the story on the front page, damn it. There was no choice. What else could she do?

“The New York Times
, Willa! They want to talk with you.”

“Tell Barney to hold page two for an hour. And the
Times
can read what I have to say in my editorial.”

Willa closed her office door. When she needed to write fast on deadline, she usually worked with the old computer on her desk, but when the words came from the heart, she went straight to her father’s Underwood No. 5. It made comforting sounds, well-worn keys striking the platen, a little bell when the carriage returned. Sure it was harder pushing those old key tops, but the effort connected her to the thoughts flowing from her mind.

She rolled a clean sheet of paper into the old typewriter. For a long while, she stared at the photograph on the wall—a streak of lightning in a black sky—

then she began to type.

First, a simple headline in 36 point:
WELCOME TO

SUPERIOR.

Then the text.

She hit Return on the carriage and the bell rang.

Almost done. A few last lines, then the presses could roll.

A greasy, untidy fellow rushed through the front door of the bowling alley. His stringy black hair, pasted to his skull, was splayed from one side of his head to the other. He wore a rumpled brown corduroy suit and matching tie. His nervous eyes scanned the room. He twitched with the crash of flying pins.

It was league night. Farmers filled the long and narrow hall. Echoes bounced from the four walls—
shouts, laughter, the boom of balls skidding down maple and pine. Then the stranger saw Wally in lane six, the graveyard of Superior Bowl, with a lone fluorescent tube sputtering overhead. For the first time ever, the manager had urged Wally to take a better lane, but after spending his whole life on the margins, he wasn’t about to go moving up now. While the Superior Motor Parts team whooped it up under the lights in lane five, Wally lofted his ball alone in semi-gloom.

The stranger scampered over outstretched legs and bowling bags and charged toward Wally with business card in hand.

“Mr. Chubb?”

“Name’s Wally,” he said. He lowered his Brunswick Zone Pro with extrawide holes, custom-drilled in Grand Island to accommodate his fingers. He took the card.

“Orson Swindell,” the man said. “I’m with Procter & Gamble. We make Pepto-Bismol.”

The salesman smelled of hard liquor and Aqua Velva.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Wally.” He drew a long breath. “I won’t take up your time. Remember the McCaughey septuplets in Iowa? Pampers and Gerber owned them lock, stock, and diapers. You’re going to be bigger. Much bigger!”

He wheezed.

“I’m here to offer you $100,000, cash up-front, in exchange for exclusive sponsorship of your, uh, your plane-eating activities.”

Swindell drew an imaginary banner in the air. “‘Pepto-Bismol! If you go too far with your 747, the one that coats is the one that soothes.’” He snorted at his own inventiveness.

“Just curious,” Wally said. “What makes Pepto-Bismol pink?”

“Good question.” As Swindell launched into a discourse on red dyes No. 22 and 28, Wally began to do the arithmetic. One hundred thousand dollars up-front. One hundred grand for what he had been doing for free. He wouldn’t make that much in 10 years even if corn prices went up. Heck, it was more cash than he could make plowing the entire state of Nebraska. One quarter would pay off the second mortgage on the farm. Another quarter would buy a decent combine and planter. The remainder would make a fine nest egg for his old age—his and Willa’s.

“I personally think Pepto should be turquoise,” Swindell was saying. “It’s more soothing.”

Wally turned to a small wrinkled man sitting under the light at the scoring table. He was swathed in a blue haze of smoke. “Otto, what do you think of Mr. Swindell’s offer?”

Otto Hornbussel was
96.
A retired Carson & Barnes circus clown with bright green eyes, pink cheeks, and wisps of white hair standing on end, he looked every bit an elf. He took a long quaff of red beer, belched delicately, and patted his lips with a blue bandana.

“Par for the course,” Otto said. He puffed on an unfiltered Camel and squinted at a separate score
sheet on his table, a careful tally of all the sponsorship offers from day one.

“Folks at Tums offered 75 grand,” he said. “Maalox offered 150, but only if you get the record. Gas-X hasn’t come back with its final proposal yet.” He ran his finger down the growing list of bidders in the upset stomach and heartburn category: Rolaids, Mylanta, Ex-Lax, Gaviscon, Pepcid AC, Tagamet B, Zantac.

He turned the page to all the other bids. “Course Black & Decker offered 200, and they guarantee TV appearances in their commercials.” He coughed. “Cuisinart is talking about 250, but you’d have to go to France, too.”

Wally went back to the foul line, like a giant playing Skeeball. The 16-pound ball seemed miniature in his powerful hand. He lifted it up and let loose with a sweeping, graceful motion. He turned his back, listening to the smack of the pins.

Strike.

“Strike it rich!” Orson Swindell shouted. “We’ll double the offer. $200,000. Strike it rich.”

Wally grinned. In his mind, he had planted a whole quarter of his land, sprinkling the cash and sponsorships like corn seed over every bump in his fields. Then in the end, he decided it would only dirty what was pure and simple. He waved good-bye to the two hundred grand.