Kentucky Waltz

FICTION Kentucky Waltz Garry Barker ("Man of the Hour," was written by my niece, Rebecca Achison, then eighteen, and appeared earlier in Appalachian Heritage) BUB WATTS, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS CW4 PERRY JONATHAN WATTS, US Army, 101st Airborne, rigged the underside of his Blackhawk helicopter with stereo speakers which blared out Bluegrass music, and there were those who swore he could make the black warplane swing and sway to the rhythm of Bill Monroe's 1946 hit song "Kentucky Waltz." Bub, the youngest of Elsie and Harper Watts' nine children, grew up on Monroe, Lester Flat and Earl Scruggs, Hank Williams, the Osborne Brothers, Ralph Stanley, and, later, Ricky Skaggs, Tom T. Hall, Keith Whitley, Hank Jr., Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette, and the many other stars of country, gospel, and bluegrass music, the sounds derived from a heritage of bagpipes, banjos, fiddles, and mandolins, the music of the Kentucky mountains. Bub Watts had enlisted in the Army at eighteen, was already married with a child, and worked his way up through the tanks and trainees of Ft. Knox to a chance to fly the helicopters used for transport, attack, and rescue across the world by the military services. All the while taking classes from Emory-Riddle University in aeronautical engineering, Bub rotated from Oregon back home to Kentucky, to Ft. Campbell, where he also qualified as a test pilot. His musical whirlwind served Bub well in Granada, Panama, and in the deserts of Iraq, where he would sweep up across the barren dunes with all four speakers roaring, spewing death and destruction to the accompaniment of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," in a snarling black machine of mass death. During that war he stopped, reluctantly, short of his goal, Saddam Hussein's headquarters, when the president called the battle to a premature end. Back home, Bub kept up his dual role as test pilot and combat flyer and was accepted into the "Night Stalkers," the elite 160tn attack and rescue team ,whose "Little Bird" choppers and pilots train relentlessly to live up to their motto, Night Stalkers Never Quit (NSNQ). 88 "By the time you hear about it, I've already been there," he told his older brother Vernon. "And we don't know until we're in the air if it's a drill or the real thing." "Worst thing about secret night attack," he added with a grin, "is that I can't play any music as we go in." "What a shame," chuckled Vernon. "It'd scare the living hell out of anybody alive if that black chopper popped up out of nowhere with Dr. Ralph wailing out ? Death' at the top of his lungs." Four of the Watts brothers were gathered at home in Finch County for the funeral of the fifth, Lee, dead far too young from cancer—most likely a result of exposure to Agent Orange during his military service in Vietnam—who woke after surgery to remove his stomach and intestines and decided he'd rather not live that way. Lee picked his pallbearers and his burial clothes, turned over and went to sleep forever. The unexpected reality that they were not, after all, immortal, had stunned the remaining eight offspring of the indomitable Elsie Watts, and hanging even heavier over the gathering was the approaching death of Harper Watts, just seventy-eight, slowing succumbing to congestive heart failure and throat cancer. Familiar stories about Lee Watts' rambunctious ways temporarily lightened the mood, memories of a brother who lived life his own way, a hard drinker, a hard worker, and hard player. "A few years back," recalled Roy, the oldest, "Lee pulled in out at the Frosty Freeze, driving that old red and white Rambler he had. It was pouring rain, and Lee was drunk as a skunk." "Wanted me to go for a ride with him. I climbed in and he floored it. Never let off. We slid around in the parking lot a time or two before he could get it pointed toward the highway, and then we headed out at about ninety. He missed the road a couple of times and cleaned out some ditches. Then over around Tilton he lost it in...