Hellcat

HELLCAT by Garry Barker When the REA snaked its wires up Sinking Creek in 1947, Verl Rose stole enough cable and hardware to string power to his new fourseat outhouse. Even before he added the yellow light bulb and scratchy Philco radio, Verl's privy was by far the most elegant in all of Caster County. The solid foundation was of creosoted railroad ties, the exterior walls were red brick tarpaper, and the roof was of sparkling galvanized tin. Inside, Verl pasted up rosebud wallpaper, laid a blue linoleum floor, and installed four hinged pink toilet seats he got from the Sears and Roebuck wishbook. Verl was working on an electric heater, too. Already, he had rigged a rotating fan with a switch which worked off the door to turn it on as you came in and off as you left. Sometimes, Verl would sit on one of his thrones and study the wishbooks, but most of the time he just sat and looked at the big poster Paul Skaggs sent him in 1943. The picture was of a snarling F6F Hellcat, the US Navy's superb little fighter plane, the bluntnosed hotrod which flew off carrier decks to shoot down over 5,000 Japanese Zeros in three years. Paul, Orb Skaggs's boy from up on Mauck Ridge, got 14 of the 5,000 Japanese planes before one of them got lucky and got him. Paul's Hellcat blew up before he could bail out. Orb got the medals, after the war, and a letter that told all about how good Paul was. Paul Skaggs was Verl's hero. Verl had tried hard to join up, in '42, but the Army refused his application for the Air Corps. "Read, hell!" Verl had snorted. "What's readin and writin got to do with drivin a airplane?" Not even as a mechanic would the Army take Verl. He had walked the six miles home from Olive Hill angry and ashamed, then two weeks later asked Buck Cox, over at the Mauck Ridge Store, just what the hell was "mentally deficient?" 105 Buck chewed and spat, allowed as how it must have something to do with the way a feller's hammer hangs, and gave Verl the wheels off an old girl's bicycle that was broken in the middle. To a mountain county short on young men, spare parts, and cash, Verl's tinkering was crucial to keeping the Fords, sawmills, radios, and coal trucks going while the war was being fought. In bits and pieces, in payment for his work, Verl acquired a flathead Ford V-8 engine and transmission, a leather aviator's cap and goggles, a pair of WWI cavalry boots, a pair of balsawood oars, six old shotguns, a pile of scrap metal, and a truckload of planed oak lumber. Verl used some of his supplies to build the elegant outhouse, and kept the rest sorted and stacked in the barn up behind the house. Verl's mother, Lily, staunchly defended Verl from gossipy neighbors who wondered how a man who never even went to the War could have got shellshocked. Lily also encouraged Verl's friendship with 10-year-old Bennie Skaggs, Paul's youngest brother, grateful that there was at least one person her eccentric son could relate to. Bennie would listen for hours to Verl's worshipful stories about Paul, and it was Bennie who collected every available scrap of printed information about the Hellcat warplane. "They was over 12,000 of 'em made," Bennie said with authority. "The Hellcat, it's outrun, outclimbed, and outshot any other old airplane they was. Why, one pilot, it says, he got 15 Japs in one fight. All by hisself." "Paul coulda done that, too," Verl said solemnly. "Paul, he was the best pilot they ever was." "Yeah," agreed Bennie. "He was, at that." He sat, studying. "Verl, I wish they was somewheres we could go to see a Hellcat. I'd sure give a bunch to see me a real one." Verl searched, but couldn't locate a real Hellcat. "They ain't even no place to land one in these parts," he reported glumly. For...