On Wings of the Morning (4 page)

“You’re only fourteen. What could you do? And you have your chores.”

“I’ll think of something,” Otto muttered, lost in thought.

He went to his room and lay on the bed, looking past the airplane models hanging by threads from the ceiling. What to do…he could think of nothing…

“Otto! Feeding time! Mach schnell! Die Kühe won’t wait!”

Otto sighed and sat up. Stupid cows. He called, “Coming, father!”

Hans was halfway to the barn when Otto caught up with him. “Did you have a good trip to town, Father?” Otto asked.

Hans grunted and kept walking.

“Guess what they’re building on the Tavener Farm! An airport! Isn’t that exciting?”

Hans stopped, a frown on his face. “I suppose that will mean you will be chasing off over there instead of doing your work.” Their cows were walking slowly toward the barn.

“I will finish all my work before I go! Please let me! Please!”

Hans looked at the ground for a moment. “Well, only if you finish all your chores. We need everyone to work here or we will not make it. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Papa, I understand! Thank you! Thank you!” And they continued to the barn to feed the herd.

***

The next morning, Otto raced through his chores, finishing them far more quickly than he usually did. He pulled his bike from the shed and pedaled off furiously. He had a sack with a sausage and a boiled potato for his lunch. He was set until the afternoon. He rode up to the airport site to see that the hangar was about half done, as was the office building. He leaned his bike against a tree and sat down to watch the building. He had a small bottle of milk with him and opened that up and sipped on it while he watched. Better drink it before it gets hot, he thought.

He sat there watching the carpenters lift the lumber into place and hammer it in with sure strokes of their hammers. He had driven a few nails himself on the farm and missed as often as he hit. He might take twenty strokes to drive a nail home. These men tapped each nail and then gave it two powerful blows—WHAM! WHAM!—and the nail was in place. Otto supposed that they had special hammers and were driving into soft wood. The wood he had to nail into was old and weathered and about as hard as iron. Yes, that must be it. He would have to ask them about their tools.

The large man he had seen on his previous visit drove up in a green Model A Ford. He got out of the car with difficulty and walked over to the building. One of the carpenters clambered down and spoke to the large man. They smiled and nodded after a while and shook hands. The large man started toward his car and then stopped. He walked toward Otto.

Otto put down his milk bottle and stood up. He wondered if he were in trouble, but the man had a pleasant expression on his face.

“Hey, kid!” he shouted.

“Yessir?”

“You want to make some money?

“I sure would.” The only money Otto could lay his hands on was what his mama gave him from her egg money, a quarter each week. He spent that on airplane magazines when they went to town each Saturday for their shopping trip.

“I’ll pay you a quarter a day to pick up nails and get things for the carpenters.”

“That would be great, sir. I can only work about four hours a day since I have to do chores on our farm.”

“Well, make that fifteen cents a day, then. Fair?” he stuck out his hand.

Otto shook it. “Yessir, very fair.” He would be money ahead at that rate.

“Well, get to work—what’s your name?”

“Otto, sir, Otto Kerchner.”

“Oh, yes. I’m Mr. Wilson. Your father is Hans Kerchner, isn’t he?”

Otto nodded.

“I hear he has a fine dairy operation. I guess that’s what you help with.”

“Yessir.”

“Well, Otto Kerchner, get to work for me!” He turned and walked back to his car, crammed himself in, started it up and drove off. Otto was already pacing the perimeter of the barn, looking for dropped nails. He found quite a few.

He had an idea. He had a magnet at home. He would bring it, tie a string around it and drag it through the grass. That would collect the nails better, some of which were hidden in clumps of grass.

The carpenter he had seen talking with Mr. Wilson climbed down, went over to the base of the front wall, took a small paper bag and handed it to Otto. “Here you go, kid. Put the nails in here. When you’ve picked up as many as you can, go over to the lumber pile—“ he pointed to a stack of lumber covered with tar paper—“get a few of the timbers and bring them here and lean them against the wall so we can grab them without coming all the way down the ladder. Watch your head when you’re near the ladders. We have been known to drop a hammer or two.”

“Yessir, I will!” Otto exclaimed.

“Wilson will be back and pay you about four. What are you getting?”

“Fifteen cents a day.”

The carpenter pushed his hat back. “There are men in the city who would love to have that. Do a good job, kid, and we’ll see what happens.”

Otto circled the building, stopping occasionally to pick up a nail from the grass and dropping it in the bag. He knew there were more he couldn’t see. He thought he should bring a rake tomorrow to do a more thorough job. That and the magnet.

He got up all the nails he could see and set the bag at the bottom of one of the ladders. Then he went to the lumber pile and started carrying two by fours over to the building, propping them against the side so the carpenters could reach them. They leaned over and pulled the lumber up to where they nailed it in place, about as fast as Otto could bring it over.

He worked like this until the head carpenter called, “Lunch time!” He had been working so hard he hadn’t noticed that the sun was at its zenith. He was used to hard work on the farm, but glad for the chance to sit down. He went over to his bike, took his lunch sack and reached down in it to retrieve the sausage and bread. The rest of the milk wasn’t real cold, but it still tasted good. He sat down to eat.

“Hey, kid!” the head carpenter called. “Come eat with us!” The carpenters were sitting in the shade created by the wall of the office.

Otto picked up his lunch and walked over to where the men were pulling out their lunches. He sat at the edge of the small group.

“You got a name, kid?”

“Yessir. It’s Otto. Otto Kerchner.”

“What you got there for lunch, Otto?”

“I have sausage and black bread and some milk.”

“Looks good.”

“We eat a lot of sausage. And potatoes. We make the sausage ourselves and grow the potatoes.”

“So you live on a farm.”

“Yessir. My papa runs about a hundred head of Holsteins. We’re a dairy farm.”

“So how do you like being a farmer?”

“I don’t care for it, but we all have to help. I want to be a pilot.”

The men had finished eating. The head carpenter pulled out a small metal flask, took a pull on it, and passed it around the circle of the other carpenters. Otto wondered what was in the flask. They didn’t offer him any.

“Well, if you want to become a pilot, an airport is a good place to do it.”

“I plan to. Maybe Mr. Wilson will give me a job when the airport is open.”

The head carpenter laughed. “Don’t expect to be paid if he does, kid. Wilson is one of the cheapest guys around. I’m surprised he’s paying you to pick up nails and carry lumber.”

I don’t care what he’s like, Otto thought. I’m just glad there’s going to be an airport. He jumped to his feet and started carrying lumber again.

The sun lowered in the sky as Otto carried planks back and forth. One carpenter cut the planks to length and handed them up to the three carpenters on ladders. They nailed the wood into place as siding that went up the wall studs. By late afternoon, they had one side of the wall completely covered. The men on the ladders climbed down.

Wilson’s car appeared down the road. He parked and climbed out of the car. Otto watched from a little distance as Wilson conferred with the head carpenter. Wilson came over to him. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a nickel and a dime.

“Here you go, kid. Green here says you worked hard. Can you come back tomorrow?”

Otto nodded enthusiastically. “Yessir! I’ll be here right after morning chores!” He mounted his bike and rode off back down the road.

Otto was glad for once that his family ran a dairy farm. The cows had to be tended every day, but at least he didn’t have to help with the harvest that was going on in late September on crop farms. And school didn’t start until the harvest was in.

With morning and afternoon chores done quickly, Otto was able to spend a lot of time at the airport. His construction job had changed into what Wilson called a “gofer” job. Otto didn’t know what that meant the first time Wilson used the word, but he explained. “It means you ‘go fer’ things that we need. Get it, kid?”

Otto nodded. As he rode his bike up to the small airport, he remembered the first time he saw an airplane land there. It was a couple of months after he had started working with the carpenters. They finished their work and Green told him that they wouldn’t be coming back. They had another job in town.

The day before they finished, a tractor appeared coming down the road, pulling a roller. The driver ran up and down what was to be the landing area, doing a final flattening of the grass and compacting the soil. When he finished, he drove off.

In about an hour, a small silver plane appeared, low on the horizon. It overflew the new hangar and office, circled once, and set down after a long smooth glide to the ground. It taxied up to the hangar and the pilot cut the engine off. Wilson pulled himself out of the small cockpit. He came over to Otto and the carpenters. He handed Green an envelope which held some bills and shook his hand. Green and the others climbed into a truck and drove off. Wilson turned to Otto.

“How’d you like that landing, kid? Here—” He handed Otto the single. “Can you come to work tomorrow?”

Otto gulped. “Thank you, Mr. Wilson. I sure can. Same time?”

“You got it, kid. Now help me push my plane into the hangar.”

Otto got on one side of the airplane and Wilson on the other. They each pushed on a wing. Otto was surprised at how easily the plane moved. They moved it into the hangar. Wilson moved around, attaching some lines to various points on the aircraft. Otto followed suit, and soon all the lines were attached.

“Well, that does it,” said Wilson, dusting his hands off. “‘Bout time for you to go tend to cows, isn’t it, kid?” He handed Otto an envelope.

“Yessir. Thank you, sir.” Otto hesitated. “Do you suppose I might have a ride in your airplane, Mr. Wilson? She’s a beaut!”

Wilson studied him. “Well, you’ve been a big help here and worked hard. We’ll see what we can do. Now scram! See you tomorrow! We have a lot of work to do.”

Otto ran over to his bike, which was leaning against a tree. Then he remembered the envelope. He ripped in open and found a five-dollar bill inside. It was more money than he had ever held in his life. He would have to write Mr. Wilson a thank-you note. Wow! Wait until Mata saw this! Maybe he could buy a commercial balsa model to put together, one that would really fly.

He pedaled off toward home, his mind filled with thoughts and expectations for the next day.

***

The next day was rainy and his papa said it had “set in for the day.” Otto hurried through his chores. Hans had gone back into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and sat at the table, watching Otto tear back and forth across the barnyard.

“Do you think Otto is sick?” he asked Maria.

“Sick?” answered Maria from the sink where she was washing dishes. Mata stood by with a dish towel to dry.

“Ja. He is running around like there is something wrong with him. I have never seen him move so fast.”

“He’s excited about the airport,” Mata said quietly. “Having one so close is like a dream come true for him.”

“Humph,” grunted Hans, and went back to his newspaper.

Otto burst into the kitchen. “I’m all done with my chores,” he exclaimed. “May I go to the airport now?”

Hans looked up from the paper. “If you are done with your chores. Be back by four.”

“I will, Papa, thank you!” Otto grabbed the bag with his lunch in it from the counter, and dashed back through the door. Maria shook her head and Mata smiled as she wiped a plate.

Otto leaped on his bike and pedaled hard for the field. He skidded to a halt in front of the small office building. Wilson came out.

“Hey, there, kid, you ready to work?”

“I’m always ready to work,” Otto answered.

Wilson chuckled. “I know that. C’mon, I’ll show you what to do.”

Wilson explained Otto’s duties to him. He was to greet any visiting aviators, fuel their craft if they asked for it and wipe the outside down and be sure the windscreen was clear. When locals brought their aircraft to the field, he would wash them and help move them and tie them down. It didn’t seem hard at all to Otto, especially as compared to farming.

“I’ll pay you five bucks a week,” Wilson offered. “And you can start by washing my plane. It’s dusty as hell.”

“Yessir!” Otto exclaimed. He ran for the bucket and rags that Wilson showed him and took them over to the water pump at the end of the hangar. He filled the bucket and carried it to Wilson’s aircraft. He carefully washed every square inch of the fuselage and used a ladder he found in the hangar to reach the wings. The airplane was covered with a fabric which was tightened by the silver coating. Otto felt as if he were in heaven, touching an airplane, making it shiny and clean.

Wilson came in to inspect his work and grunted with satisfaction. “You do good work, kid. Come on in the office and sit a spell.”

“Yessir,” Otto said, and thought, Life just can’t get any better.

***

Otto was describing his day at the dinner table that evening. The family listened in silence, then his father spoke.

“Vat do you know about this Wilson?”

“He’s very nice to me, and he has an expensive car and a beautiful airplane and he gave me a job—“