The Feet of God

60 - UP AND AT ‘EM

I heard Yeller Tom whistling Reveille.  “Wake up,” he gave me a smack to the head.

I rubbed my eyes awake.  The effects of knockout gas and dope and booze still lingered.  He handed me a small pack of seeds.

I didn’t disguise my disappointment.  “I was kinda hoping for an omelet with bacon or French toast or something more nourishing.”

“It is not for you.  Feed le pigeon, Gertrude.”

The smell coming from the cage below my seat was getting kinda rank.  “Ain’t you gonna clean this bird’s cage?”

“Non.”  Yeller Tom’s nose flared.  “Now we fly.”

I ripped open the bag of seeds and threw ‘em below my seat.

Yeller Tom pulled on levers and knobs and dials again, and his little blue biplane started with a huge discharge of smoke.  As we taxied down the bumpy path I knew there’d be no in-flight meals served but I could sure go for some breakfast.  Even a lousy bagel without the cream cheese, but I didn’t bring the subject up.  I just looked around as we rose into the air and the countryside spread out in front of us.  We flew up into the boundless skies in an attempt to search and recover what property rightfully belonged to Yeller Tom.  I was not optimistic about our prospects, honestly, and sorta hoped he’d just forget about the rip-off and move on.  But Yeller Tom apparently had other ideas, and he was determined to get what was his, along with some major payback.

I wished he had a pack of cigarettes so’s I could bum one off him.  But he told me back at The Moose Knuckle he never took up the nicotine habit, so I just sat there jones’n for a smoke.  Then, to my complete surprise, Yeller Tom turned to me and winked, “How about a little eye-opener?”

Oh my God.  He passed me a fifth of Mockingbird tequila.  My favorite tequila in the whole world.  I couldn’t believe my good luck.  “Gracias,” I said as my shaking hands grabbed the bottle.

“De nada,” he replied.  (I had no idea he was multilingual.)  “Your frequent flyer miles have upgraded you to First Class from Business.  Bon appétit,” Yeller Tom laughed.  Then I think he must’a been reading my mind, ‘cause he spun around and cautioned, “However, please remember, smoking is strictly prohibited.”

Since I was not exactly sure how our mission was gonna go down, I shouted at the back of his head, “What’re we gonna do now?”

“I intend to kill the assholes who stole from me, mon ami.”  I think he was fondling that long-barreled black gun of his as he spoke, but I was certain he was dead serious.  “I will defend mon honneur.”

“But how do you know where to look?”

He just pointed to his head and nodded confidently.  “Keep your eyes peeled for the black hearse.”

“Ya think maybe there’s an outside chance they’d be at a roadside diner?”  Visions of hot coffee, scrambled eggs, stacks of pancakes, hash browns and link sausages danced in my head.

Yeller Tom didn’t say nothin’, and for the first time I was beginning to wonder if maybe he was hard of hearing.  Or maybe he just didn’t care much for idle conversation.  In any case, things remained silent except for the constant engine noise, so I occupied myself searching the terrain below and try’n to spot a black hearse.

We’d been fly’n for a couple’a hours when Yeller Tom suddenly started point’n real energetic at something down on the ground.  “Et, voilà!”

Damnation, on the road below there was a black hearse that looked suspiciously like the black hearse from yesterday’s attack.  (Well, actually, it looked like every other black hearse I’d ever seen.)  We made a pass overhead, then Yeller Tom pushed in the stick and we begun to drop like an iron anvil.  I hung onto the sides of my seat.  We banked and swung around to get behind them.

“Mon ami,” Yeller Tom shouted at me, “there are binoculars back there somewhere.  Find them and read the license plate.  I want to be sure it is my former associates before I land and kill them.”

For such a confined space, there sure was a lot of crap stuffed around this seat of mine.  I found the binoculars just as we dropped in close behind, and I held ‘em up to my vibrating face.  “Okay, okay, letters…I see letters…an I, a C, and a P….”

Yeller Tom shouted to heaven, “Les bâtards!”  He dramatically waved his big black gun and fired a single shot, scoring a direct hit on the right rear tire of the hearse.  The tire blew and the vehicle swerved, shimmied and swayed, then it flipped over and over again, until it finally came to a rest upside-down in a drainage ditch.

Yeller Tom pulled back on the stick and the nose of his plane rose straight up into the sky.  Suddenly I was grateful my stomach was empty as he did somersaults in the air, and then he rolled the plane upright again and the earth came rushing up from below.