Amerika by Paul Lally Page A

stars and stripes to protest to the ‘cowardly Neutrality Act.’ Texas was one, Louisiana another. More and more each day it seemed.
    ‘Back soon.’
    I clambered over the small partition separating the cockpit from the passenger compartment to check out my mother’s tie downs - not that I needed to. She came from a long line of Key West ‘wreckers;’ men who ever since the seventeenth century had made a living salvaging the remains of storm-wrecked ships in the Florida Straits. No surprise that each of her knots was perfect, just like her cigars. I pumped up pressure in a small tank filled with sea water and waved the spray nozzle back and forth over the squirming lobsters. Their rubber- banded claws clicked like castanets in their fury at being trapped in a cage.
    ‘I know how you feel, fellas.’
    Abby shouted, ‘Traffic, ten o’clock high.’
    ‘Look again. This is a no-fly zone except for us.’
    ‘But I see it, Daddy!’
    Seconds later I saw it too, a big, beautiful Pan Am Sikorsky S-40 flying boat about a thousand feet above us, on the same course, her four engines throttled back to lose altitude without causing a drop of gin to spill in the cocktails the passenger were no doubt enjoying. 
    This must be Pan Am’s twice- daily Havana/Miami Flight, right on schedule and earning another hefty chunk of money for Juan Trippe and company. Unlike the Baltimore-based Boeing 314 Clippers painted in Lufthansa colors, the S-42 still had its Pan American Airways lettering. I couldn’t begin to imagine the deal Trippe had cut with the Nazis to keep his airline going, but the man never did business with anybody unless a hefty chunk of cash led in a straight line from the signed contract to his bank account.
    Back in the early-30s, our Miami/Havana flight had been one of my first regular assignments as a ‘Pilot-in-Training,’ the term Pan Am gave their new-hires. Fortunately I got promoted to the engineering side soon after and lost that designation. Then I transitioned to navigator and then finally to the cockpit as first officer. All new-hires went this same route; step by step, job by job, up the long ladder to the left seat. Nobody ever just walked in and took over as captain. Pan Am’s Chief Engineer André Preister saw to that.
    I  first  met  that  stiff-necked,  bald  headed,  tight-fisted,  hard-headed Dutchman when I was nineteen. I was working the radio night shift one night when Orlando dropped by for a visit. My job in the operations hut involved  very  little  work  on  this  particular  night  because  weather  had delayed the Havana takeoff.
    I had been sitting doing nothing for two solid hours waiting for the Morse code signal from the airplane telling me they had finally lifted off. Once that happened, I would stay busy transmitting and receiving position reports all along the ninety-mile route separating Key West from Havana. But at this rate it looked like it would never happen.
    At the time, Orlando worked at the Key West docks as a marine engine mechanic laboring in the hulls of smelly old fishing boats, making sense of their beat-up engines and barely getting paid. Since I spent my nights here, we didn’t see each other as much as we used to when we were kids. I remember that particular night saying something to him like, ‘Ninety miles from here to Havana is nothing. I could piss that far.’
    Orlando’s booming laughter made me laugh too.
    Preister’s voice cut through us like a saber. ‘Vatt iss so funny?’ He stood in the doorway, short and stern, his small eyes blinking rapidly in the bright light. He pointed accusingly at Orlando. ‘Who iss diss?’
    ‘My friend, Mr. Diaz.’
    ‘No visitors on duty, Mr. Carter. You know dat iss the rule. Get out now Mister Diazzzzz.’
    I thought fast. ‘But sir, Orlando wasn’t here to visit. He was here to see you about a job.’
    ‘A yob?’
    I exchanged a wordless glance with Orlando. He squinted ever so slightly, our