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"How did you do it?" Skipper asked, apropos of nothing.
Mayday looked over at the Corsair, or tried to. Skipper was awkwardly far to his left, a blue blur beyond the dark rim of his glasses. He rapidly reconsidered turning his front wheels, as they were currently resting on narrow corrugated-steel platform rails, six feet off the floor of Dottie's garage. Mayday gave a tiny sigh of resignation and hoped Skipper would realize his problem without him actually having to point it out. He'd had so much of feeling old, broken, and disabled lately...
"Do what?" he asked, fixing his eyes on the shelf of diagnostic equipment and associated cables that happened to be directly in front of him. So many cables, red and blue, yellow and black, with copper clip ends and plastic caps, thin and fat, round and flat.
The mechanic herself wasn't underneath Mayday at the moment, or in front of him, or reading the portable unit that sat almost under his right front wheel. She was off to his right by the row of bright green cabinets, ranting quietly to herself. He'd gotten used to her a long time ago, the first year she'd lived in Propwash Junction. Being old meant he needed a lot of maintenance. Dottie was matter-of-fact about that, and competent, and he appreciated her.
He'd gotten used to her a lot more this week, since the fire and the TMST investigation. He'd gotten used to Chug and Sparky chattering in the background, mostly at each other, sometimes at the two-way radio. He'd gotten used to Skipper's usually-silent presence in the corner of the garage. He wasn't sure whether Skipper was there in a bid to be reassuring, or because he relied on Sparky and Sparky was with Chug, or just because he had no place better to be with Dusty out of town.
"How did you convince Dusty to train as a firefighter?" The old warplane -- not as old as Mayday, but old enough to understand -- taxied around closer to Mayday. Still not really into his field of vision, unfortunately; he stopped where the rim of Mayday's glasses split him visually in two. It was hard to look at him long, not when the blurry side didn't even line up with the sharp side. Mayday restrained another sigh, looked ahead, and listened to Skipper's voice instead of trying to look. The sound was reassuring, whether that was his intent or not. Gentle. Patient. Loud and slow and clearly enunciated enough for Mayday's long-ago-damaged hearing.
Skipper didn't know what he was or wasn't doing for the old firefighter; his hearing was sharp and his vision perfect. And good thing, Mayday thought after a moment. Glasses would be a lot more of an inconvenience, and nearsightedness more of a hindrance, to a plane than they were to a fire truck.
"Don't get me wrong. I'm glad you did," Skipper went on. "It's just that -- When you've lost something so big that it seems your whole purpose, your life's work, your meaning is gone, it's hard to just turn around and do something else. It feels empty."
"You know something about that, huh?" Mayday asked, sympathy softening his own voice. Skipper and Sparky had been in Propwash Junction before Mayday had come, though they were both newer wartime models. Mayday hadn't really known much about their pasts, other than that they were from the Navy. He had gotten more entertainment than real information out of the rumors that swirled around Skipper like dust devils. But he'd been able to see, sharp as through a new pair of glasses, that Skipper's work as a civilian flight instructor was at best half-hearted. Something was missing in his routine, something that yes, Mayday would describe as meaning. Until Dusty, of course.
"Mm-hm," Skipper replied.
Behind Mayday, the whir of a small motor announced Sparky, rolling in. A moment later, the much louder, deeper rumble of Chug's engine followed, accompanied by his boisterous baritone. "And we've got to call up Bob in Nevada. Remember Bob?"
"We met him in New York City, when Dusty won the Wings Around the Globe Rally," Sparky agreed.
"And that crazy tow truck from Radiator Springs. What was his name?"
"Tow Mater, but I don't think anybody in Radiator Springs services planes. Wasn't that why he was up here? He had to tow somebody."
"No, that was a car. I don't remember what was wrong with the car. He wasn't just out of fuel. Maybe Dottie knows. Dottie? ...Sparky?"
Sparky was silent. Dottie, who'd wheeled herself around to look their way, caught Mayday's eyes and rolled hers.
"Shutting up," Chug said, and Mayday couldn't tell whether he was reacting to Sparky, Dottie or Skipper. He'd normally have bet on Dottie, but he could actually see the mechanic, and she hadn't done much. Skipper, then.
"I don't think he thinks it's permanent," Mayday sighed, a trace of humor coloring his voice and curving his mouth. "You know Dusty. He always wants to help out, whenever something's wrong. Remember when he was racing in Germany and he helped that British plane land safe? That's our Dusty. If I'd been thinking about it, I'd've known back then he was a firefighter in the making." Mayday chuckled. "But I probably wouldn't have believed it. He wanted so much to be a racer."
"Exactly," Skipper agreed.
"I think he thinks he'll just put in a few months, maybe a year, as a firefighter here in Propwash, and then we'll hire a real firefighter and he'll go back to what he does best." For now, he added silently. "He doesn't realize yet that once he starts saving lives, it'll be hard to let go. And I sent him to Piston Peak. He will save someone's life before he comes back."
Sparky rolled up past Skipper's wing to look in Mayday's face, on the good side of his glasses rim. "But like you said, he did that as a racer, too."
"I'll be honest," Mayday confided. "I'm less afraid he'll go back to racing and leave me trying to hire a new firefighter, than that he won't come back to Propwash at all, because they need him more at Piston Peak."
Skipper rolled back a foot or so, thoughtful, as Chug and Sparky talked over each other in a jumble of protest.
"Or that he'll come back, but it'll take something terrible to make him," Mayday murmured, and at least Dottie clearly heard him.
"But that wasn't what I asked," Skipper pitched his voice to silence the others -- something that worked on everyone in town except Leadbottom. Unfortunately. "I meant, how did you talk him into it?"
"Oh," said Mayday. "Oh, that. I have a picture on my wall, an old picture, of one of the first SEATs. Single Engine Air Tankers. Firefighting planes, like Dusty's going to be. I told him they drop water like a cropduster sprays fertilizer, and he volunteered. That's really all it took."
"Oh," Chug said, apparently speaking for all of them. There was an awkward pause, which Dottie broke by rolling back under Mayday with a tray of parts. Some power tool whined, and Mayday's undercarriage rattled somewhere between painfully and ticklishly. Sparky didn't bat an eye; Chug and Skipper were still out of sight.
"We never had a firefighting plane here before," Sparky mused. "At least not as long as I've been here. Always fire trucks."
"When did you and Skipper come to town?" Mayday asked. "Right after the war?"
"Nineteen-forty-six," Sparky replied proudly, drawing out the syllables.
Mayday smiled a little. "Then you never had a firefighting plane." He paused. "We. Propwash."
"I'm going to have to start learning a whole new history." Sparky sounded more eager than imposed upon.
That made Mayday chuckle indulgently. First Dusty, now Sparky. He had more of an appreciative audience now than he'd had in the nearly three decades he'd been in Propwash Junction. Mostly, Mayday talked only when he couldn't stop himself, and as little as he said always seemed to be far more than anyone wanted to hear.
"The first firefighting planes... Well, the smokejumpers came first. Ground-based firefighters that parachute into places the roads don't go. That was picking up around when you came to Propwash. Used to be, it was all Jeeps. Now, now they're all kinds." Mayday paused to reflect, and Dottie fired up her blowtorch.
"You're being careful with that, right?" Mayday teased Dottie, as he always did.
"What, you think I want to light my fire truck on fire?" Dottie rejoined. "I'm careful! Worry about Dusty." He couldn't see her roll her eyes, but he could hear it in her voice.
"Dusty's probably met a crew of smokejumpers by now, in Piston Peak. They've always had one." Mayday paused again. "Now where was I? Oh. The first aerial firefighters. It was about ten years after the war ended. They figured out how to retrofit bombers to drop water at about the same time as they did it to cropdusters."
"Hm," Skipper said. "I suppose some of the bombers I knew could have carried enough water to be useful. If they had the right kind of tank for it, that is. They were all engine and frame. Me, you'd have to strip away so much armor to make up for the weight that I'd be a skeleton."
Sparky had pursed his mouth and pulled it to one side in a frown as his boss talked. "But Skipper, remember they're not taking off from a boat. I bet an air base like Piston Peak has a full-length runway. Right, Mayday?"
"Well, I don't actually know, but I wouldn't be surprised."
"So they could carry more," Sparky said. "So could you. And so could Dusty."
"Anyway," Skipper said, not quite cutting Sparky off. "You were telling us about the bombers and cropdusters in, what, the fifties?"
"Right. I was in California myself then. Spent my first fifty years in California. It was a lovely place, mild winters, but oh, man, there were fires!" Mayday rolled his eyes, this time. "I got to see some of the first air tankers train and serve their initial missions. I had my picture taken with one flying in the background. Nice fellow, a few years older than me, came out from Oklahoma in the Dust Bowl years. He used to joke that if he'd been able to drop water back then, he might never have had to leave." Mayday trailed off; judging by Sparky's expression, the joke was too sad for his present farm-country audience. He was glad he couldn't see Chug.
He cleared his throat and tried again. "That's what Dusty saw. Mendocino, nineteen fifty-five. The first flights were in fifty-four, it just took me a year to bribe the guy with a camera to make me that photo." He grinned at Sparky, because now that he thought about it, Sparky resembled the pert little reporter-photographer that had so often made the trip in from Chico.
"I bet," Sparky said, grinning back eagerly. "So retrofitted bombers and cropdusters were the cool new thing, huh? Kind of like Dusty winning races?"
"Well... Not exactly." Mayday twisted his tires in place on the platform, pulling the front edges inward, out of alignment, in a probably-too-obvious expression of discomfort. "We were grateful for those planes, let me be clear. We were glad for them every single fire we fought. We'd learned how much we needed them the year before we got them." He sank into his suspension, the breath coming out of him. "The Serpentine Belt Fire. Bad fire, bad land. We didn't need smokejumpers, we needed mud droppers. Needed more radios, too, but that's another story."
-- The fire in front of Mayday, which had been seeming to die down, flared abruptly ahead of a stronger gust of wind. Smoke puffed into their faces, embers flew, and tongues of flames shot into the choked darkness of the sky.
"Spot fires behind us! Below the road!" Mayday's straw boss wheeled in a Y-turn. "Mayday, Hose, get those out before they spread!"
"Copy," Hose replied even as he and Mayday rolled around to the steep downslope. "I got the two on the right."
"I'll meet you from the left," Mayday answered, pointing his nozzle at a burning tree trunk. Pressure from Agnes, the heavy duty mother tanker, was good, and his first spray was right on target. Another gust of wind hit him from behind, and embers scored across his rear bumper and the back of his tank. Points of heat seared into the rubber of his tires, but he couldn't smell them for the smoke. A glow beyond the trees downslope flared into brilliance. For a terrible instant, Mayday saw right through to the creek below, orange with firelight and clogged with debris.
"Wind's from the west," the straw boss was saying. "We can't keep moving up the road. Back out! Everybody go, now!"
The fire in the creek drainage was brighter and brighter, jumping rapidly from crown to crown on the downslope, and sweeping through the greasewood on the far side. Old as a Model T and dry as paper, the brush went up like fireworks. Mayday felt a twinge of guilt, the weight of failure as he unhooked from Agnes, but he started rolling back down the road with the rest of his crew.
The inferno surrounded them above and below, but the break they'd been cutting protected them from the right. He crept along, barely able to see the bumper in front of him for the smoke, trying not to choke or stall in the hot, wavering air. He stung in all quarters now from embers, and the heat had the physical substance of -- water, at least, buffeting him. The fire roared, and he barely heard his boss's voice over it, but the words would haunt him later.
"Where's that spot fire crew? Are they still in the canyon?" --
Sparky's eyes had gone sad, picking up on Mayday's tone and posture. Skipper had rolled forward, this time enough that Mayday could actually see his worried, sympathetic face, an expression as gentle as his voice had been. The old fire truck was again very glad he couldn't see Chug.
"In fifty-four, we got them," Mayday said. "Fresh faces, with propellers in front of them. We needed some fresh faces," he added as an aside. "We'd scared away all the youngest of our crew with a bad year. Well," and his voice dropped to a murmur, "the ones that survived. But! Those were ground vehicles, not planes."
-- The fire followers were thick on the north slope that spring, inappropriately cheerful colors, as Mayday and a few of the others watched from Serpentine Belt Ridge. Most of the firefighters were close to his age, and world-weary, but not ready to turn in their time cards for good. There were Hose and Agnes, KT the tireless crawler tractor, and Tank.
Of the usual Mendocino crew, the ones who'd been on the road and the ridge lines, fighting the main fire, safer -- though they hadn't known it at the time -- Tank was the youngest. The ex-sergeant had been with the Forest Service since the end of the war, and seemed to like stopping fires in California much better than starting them in occupied Europe. He'd taken the tragedy the best of all of them, only once commenting that he thought he'd escaped such heavy losses by staying out of Korea.
KT, on the other hand, had never met a problem that couldn't be solved by working harder. Mayday could see her punishing herself with every firebreak she cut. Agnes gathered them all together at the end of each day, counting them as if they were her own imprinted children. Hose had nightmares; during the days he seemed all right.
Then there were two Jeeps, back up from Chico. Only two of the nine that had been in the canyon. One had been the last to reach the ridge, hobbling up that last steep slope on a flat rear tire, scorched and blackened but alive. The nine Jeeps had made it, but none of the heavier vehicles with them could manage the hills. They'd rolled down into the ravine, and with the wind blasting down the canyon, the creek bed had afforded no protection. --
"Planes don't get stuck at the bottom of a ninety percent grade," Mayday explained briskly, almost cheerful. "At least, that was the idea at the time."
Skipper snorted. "You must never have met a -- trainee."
"Oh, I did. In time. And I suppose even our Dusty will make his share of mistakes," Mayday sighed.
"Oh, come on," Chug said. "This is Dusty you're talking about! The underdog champion!"
"Our friend," Sparky agreed, but more mildly.
Dottie added her sigh. "I wish I could say I disagreed with Mayday, but -- really. We know Dusty."
"Everyone makes mistakes when they're starting out," Skipper soothed. "Wasn't that why you sent him to me, Chug?"
"Y--yeah. You've got me there."
"Blade's a good trainer," Mayday said, mostly to Skipper. "Very responsible, very dedicated. He won't let Dusty get hurt."
He saw Skipper wince at that, but so had the other three, and he didn't think anything of it. "Back then, we didn't even know what a dumb mistake looked like from a plane. They were figuring it out with the rest of us. Still, watching them drop a load of water from the sky like our own personal cataclysm? It was miraculous. It was beautiful."
-- They heard the sound of a propeller before the small plane appeared from beyond the ridge, a flash of silver rising out of the bright flowers and the black ash that had been a greasewood stand. The little once-cropduster turned, opening his tanks, and water spilled down in misty cataracts through the mountain air, blanketing the near hillside. And then the plane wheeled again, almost on one silver wingtip, and disappeared behind the ridge.
Job done. Mission complete. Firefighter safe.
Mayday and the others burst into cheers. One of the Jeeps was crying unabashedly.
The fire followers were brilliant colors, the earth's own flag, raised to half mast to honor the dead -- and what they had taught the living. --
"They were a big help," Mayday continued, "with containment and scouting. And then there were the smokejumpers. First in, last out, fast and thorough. They're why I retired to Propwash Junction, really." He shrugged his front wheels. "SEATs and smokejumper carriers. I like planes." Because ever since Mendocino, he'd fallen asleep better to the sound of propellers. He'd breathed easier beneath a crowded sky.
"Retired!" Chug scoffed.
"Well, it's a quieter posting than anything I ever had before," Mayday said. "I was getting too old for Los Angeles, and I was definitely too old for forest ranger work."
"Too old for Los Angeles? What were you, a movie star?" Sparky teased.
"No," Mayday laughed. "I was a firefighter! Not like -- well, I may have saved a movie star or two in my day. But by the eighties, I was getting faded too. I didn't want to admit it, but I was barely up to big city traffic jams, let alone big city fires." He sighed again. "Shoulda known even Propwash would get too big for me."
"Mayday," Dottie said softly, probably gearing up for one of her rare pep talks.
He didn't make her deliver it -- this time. "That's when I met Blade Ranger. Nineteen eighty-three."
"Who?" Chug asked.
"That's the guy he sent Dusty to train with," Sparky reminded Chug.
"Oh, him!" Chug laughed it off. Dottie rolled her eyes, but forebore to mention that Mayday had just mentioned him.
"He was -- down on his luck," Mayday said, vaguely remembering that Blade didn't actually like talking about where he'd come from, now that he was "respectable." Mayday wasn't good at dissembling -- and usually those around him had the sense not to trust him with their secrets -- but he could at least try to shut his mouth. "I ran into him on my day off, in a bar off the one-oh-one." He chuckled, remembering. "I guess I talked him into becoming a firefighter, too. Don't ask me how, because I don't remember!"
-- "I sure wish I was a helicopter sometimes," Mayday rambled. "Bet you've never gotten stuck on the interstate, trying to squeeze along the median divider, while someone's life is depending on you. You could just -- fly right over!"
"Yeah," sighed Blade, looking down at the dark oblong below his own eyes. "But at least you know how to save someone's life when you get there."
Mayday hesitated, then, looking over at the chopper, who didn't seem to notice. "Who was it?" he asked softly.
"My partner," Blade admitted. "There was an accident. I was right there, and I -- I was useless. Five years of my life, all the years of his, all over in a matter of minutes."
Mayday winced, squeezing his eyes shut for a few seconds. "To the ones who aren't coming back," he said, nudging his oil can toward Blade in an understated toast, to which Blade half-heartedly responded. They were silent then, the rest of the bar clinking and clattering around them, the television in the corner chattering on over the tip of Blade's rotor.
"But you don't understand," the helicopter went on after a moment. "You've lost -- friends, teammates? the people you went to save?"
Mayday dropped his eyes; in nearly fifty years, of course, it was all of the above.
"But you did your honest best," Blade said. "Me, I'm an actor. I've been pretending to be a hero, but when it really comes down to it..." He turned away a little on tiny wheels. "Useless. I'm a travesty."
"You want to be able to help next time?" Mayday asked.
"Yes! I mean, I hope there won't be a next time, but --"
"Take a weekend off and take a first aid course," Mayday suggested. "Three days. You'll learn a lot. It won't let you do everything, but it'll let you do something. Or better yet, take three months and come back certified as a paramedic. There are half a dozen programs in the area."
Blade blinked at him, giving it real thought. "...What about a firefighter, like you? I've seen choppers in the hills up above Pasadena, and out near Riverside."
"They'd love you," Mayday said, and then grimaced. "My boss would probably give you my job."
Blade gave him a sly grin -- not quite happy, but there was something kind in it. "I wouldn't take your job. I'm too nice for that. I'm the good cop."
"Firefighter," Mayday corrected firmly. --
Skipper eyed Mayday suspiciously, but kept his mouth closed. Mayday hastily continued.
"I saw him again a few years later. Remember when there were those big fires out in the hills, and they were talking about evacuating Propwash Junction?"
"Yeah," Chug piped up. "We thought we'd lose the whole year's corn harvest."
"Those," Mayday said. "They brought in firefighters from six states to help fight them. Blade Ranger was one. I was new here, my second year, and busy creating defensible space around the city. Bare earth, hard for a fire to cross."
"I remember that!" Sparky laughed. "I was out there with flags, trying to keep people from mistaking your 'defensible space' for a runway!"
Skipper snorted and muttered something uncharitable. Mayday had a vague memory of Skipper during that particular crisis, in which the Corsair had found himself a vantage point and a pair of binoculars, and Mayday had actually mistaken him for a part of the fire control operation for a few hours. He hadn't known Skipper very well yet.
These days, he thought, Skipper would help, just like he'd helped with the water tower. Dusty had brought out the best in him. But it was probably for the better that Blade and Skipper had managed to miss each other back then.
"He stopped by to say thank you," Mayday recalled. "At Honkers, where else? We talked until too many people recognized him from what he calls 'the bad old days,' and he said he'd be back when everyone here had forgotten him. Maybe that's this year, who knows? But he also said that becoming a firefighter was like a second chance at life." He eyed the concrete floor of Dottie's workshop. "I hope... if nothing else works out, Dusty feels the same."
"Sounds like you sent him to the right trainer," Skipper said, that reassuring tone back, but not the least bit false.
"If nothing else works out!" Chug scoffed. "We're going to make it work out."
"I'm going down to the post office to see if the mail has come in," Sparky announced.
"Check for me, too, would you?" Dottie asked. "I miss next day air!"
"No kidding," Sparky agreed.
"I'll go with you," Chug said. "Hey, do you remember that guy from Las Vegas, the one who collected tires?"
"Yeah, do you think he'd have the gear box?"
As they drove off, Dottie rolled right around in front of the platform. "Mayday... If you don't feel like telling us the rest, that's all right, but..."
"But you owe it to Dusty," Skipper finished. "Tell him. And don't worry. He can keep a secret."
"Oh, it's not a secret," Mayday demurred, then hesitated. "I just don't like making everyone sad. And Blade, well, Blade's another story."
Skipper snorted, propeller spinning a half-turn. "Well, don't tell us his secret."
"I sure hope he tells Dusty. All right, all right," Mayday sighed, and then pulled a smile, abruptly feeling more like his old self. "I'll tell him far more than he wants to hear. About everything."