Plane Truth
by Karen Beatty
I didn’t want to end up in jail, what with the wife and all them kids, you know. That’s why I never did get rich—not from lack of opportunity. I’m a poor man, but I done alright, ‘til I got to thinking about that airplane.
Frankie, that’s my nephew, my dead brother’s boy. He had it all set up easy. I just had to do the one run and that was it; the plane was mine to keep. Now Frankie, he was in cahoots with the law down there in Okeechobee—you know, Florida. I’ll be 66 years old and what with no education to speak of and a bad ticker, I couldn’t get me a pilot’s license, which is why I needed my oldest boy’s identification. I wasn’t never one to use my kids in any sorry stuff, but that one time I borrowed Mikey’s ID to get the flying papers—you know, just for the age thing. He didn’t know nuthin’ about it hisself. His name’s Michael and that’s my name, too, but nobody knows me by that. They been calling me Speed since I was about 15.
I’ll tell ya one thing, I got smart kids, ever one. They’s all good at sports, too, even the girls. And they’s pretty. If ya look in my wallet, you’ll see a picture of my oldest gal. Sometimes I’ll tell people she’s my girlfriend, but I don’t mean nuthin’ by it.
I got eight kids. Maybe more. Eight’s all I’m accountable for, let’s put it that way. Youngest boy is fourteen now. I love them kids—give my right arm for any one of ‘em. I believe they know that, but it ain’t something we talk about, if you know what I mean. I ain’t much of a talker, leastwise, not that way. I always told ‘em, “Be good, children, but if ya can’t be good, don’t get caught.” Not much in the way of fatherly advice, I guess.
Beating up on your wife and kids ain’t something ya intend for. I don’t know what to say about that. I get real bad headaches, so I ain’t always in the best of moods. I never know’d my own Daddy—he run off when I was little. I saw where the law was looking for him in the newspaper, and I cut the article out and carried it around in my wallet. I don’t really know why. I reckon it was more about remembering what not to do.
But since my oldest boy got the same name as me, it wasn’t all that hard for Frankie to have me a ID made up in Mikey’s name. Ya see, flying airplanes is like driving a car—they only check up on your license if ya git caught doing’ something wrong. Frankie, he made all the arrangements at the airfield in Okeechobee. Nobody ever asked me a thing.
Of course I took flying lessons. I ain’t crazy—I took at least four or five lessons. Frankie, he paid for them down there in Florida. See, I was a natural; Frankie knew that. I always was able to figure out mechanical things, no problem. Bicycles when I was a kid, tanks in the army, trucks—just show me any car and I can take it apart and put it back together and have it running better in no time. I was trained in the school o’ hard knocks, if ya know what I mean: figure things out, do for yourself—like that.
It might surprise ya to know that I like to read. I read a book about Texas by Mr. James Michener. That’s a pretty good book. I wished I had the opportunity to get more book learnin’, but that’s how it goes. Once you start down one way when you’re growing up, it ain’t so easy to switch gears and go another way. No offense, but smart ain’t necessarily from a book; that much I figured out. My middle daughter, she married a educated man, but he ain’t that smart. Can barely fix a flat tire and gotta write down directions. He’s a nice enough feller, though.
I know’d how the drug business operated. Frankie’d been running his mouth off about it for years. He had it all set up nice on the Colombia end. All I had to do was find the airstrip and land on it, wait around while the plane was loaded up and head back to Okeechobee. Then wait for the unloading on that end and the plane was mine to keep. Well, after I delivered the goods to Frankie, of course, but that wasn’t nuthin’. I’m a truck driver so I can get from here to there without even thinking twice. And Frankie, he had no shortage of cars, planes or money. He know’d I wouldn’t do it for the money, though. Money ain’t nothing. It comes and goes just like people. Don’t get me wrong, I like money, but I ain’t one to cry over it when it goes. What I wanted was that airplane and the flying papers, not the money. I pictured landing my own airplane up north one day with all my buddies and my kids there cheering me on. My wife, she wouldn’t have no part of it, but the kids, they’d get a big kick outta something like that. Frankie, he had airplanes to spare. Once when he suspected one of his planes was under surveillance in South America, he had the local fellers dig a hole and bury the whole goddam plane. I thought that was something. Frankie, he didn’t take no chances, and I didn’t intend to neither.
So, I didn’t plan on getting mixed up with no outsiders. Hell, I don’t know a Muslim from a Jew from a Christian. I got a black friend, though—a good feller. Anyway, this foreign feller I’d see hanging around the airport there in Florida asked if I’d give him flying lessons if he paid cash up front. Now, I understand about wanting to fly, and I figure it beats running drugs for Frankie ‘cause it ain’t never been my aim to end up in jail. So, I done it. I give him a few flying lessons, that’s all. He seemed like a nice enough feller. Right smart, too—knew quite a bit about airplanes. So I done it.
And then that mess over there in New York City and the Pentagon. So, there I was being investigated and ever’body pointing fingers, trying to tie me to who knows what. Of course, there was nothin’ to it and nothin’ ever come of it. I don’t know what else to tell ya.
Karen Beatty was reared in an impoverished family in Eastern Kentucky and later served as a Peace Corps Thailand Volunteer. She settled in NYC, where she trained as a trauma-informed counselor for police officers, firefighters, and veterans at John Jay College of the City University of New York. Her short stories and essays have appeared in over 40 publications, including Eureka Literary Review, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Books Ireland, NonBinary Review, and Mud Season Review. Her first novel, Dodging Prayers and Bullets, was published in September 2023. she/her they/them
