The Plant. Part 17

By James Whitney Special to The Times Special to The Times

CENTRAL FALLS, RHODE ISLAND: A Cessna 404 t.i.tan commuter airplane owned and operated by Ocean State Airways crashed shortly after takeoff from Barker Field in this small Rhode Island city yesterday afternoon, killing both pilots and all five pa.s.sengers. Ocean State Airways has been running shuttle flights to New York City's LaGuardia since 1977. OCA Flight 14 was airborne for less than two minutes when it crashed in a vacant lot only a quarter of a mile from its takeoff point. Witnesses said the aircraft banked low over a warehouse, narrowly missing the roof, just before going down. "Whatever was wrong must have gone wrong right away," said Myron Howe, who was cutting weeds between Barker Field's two runways when the accident occurred. "He got upstairs and then he tried to come on back. I heard one engine cut out, then the other. I saw both props were dead. He missed the warehouse, and he missed the access road, but then he went in hard." Preliminary reports indicate no maintenance problems with the C404, which is powered by two 375 horsepower turbo-charged piston engines. The make has an excellent safety record overall, and the aircraft which crashed had less than 9000 hours on its clock, according to Ocean State Airways President George Ferguson. Officials from the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have launched a joint investigation of the crash. Killed in the accident, the first in Ocean State's four-year history, were John Chesterton, the pilot, and Avery Goldstein, the copilot, both of Pawtucket. Robert Weiner, Tina Barfield, and Dallas Mayr have been identified as three of the downed aircraft's five pa.s.sengers. The ident.i.ties of the other two, thought to have been husband and wife, have been withheld pending notification of next of kin. Ocean State Airways is most commonly used by pa.s.sengers connecting with larger airlines operating out of LaGuardia Airport. According to Mr. Ferguson, OSA has suspended operations at least until the end of the week and perhaps longer. "I'm devastated by this," he said. "I've flown that particular craft many times, and would have sworn there wasn't a safer plane in the skies, large or small. I flew it down from Boston myself on Monday, and everything was fine with it then. I don't have any idea what could have caused both engines to shut down the way they did. One, possibly, but not both."

From John Kenton's diary

April 1, 1981

There's an old Chinese curse which goes, "May you live in interesting times." I think it must have been especially aimed at folks who keep diaries (and if they follow Roger's edict, that number will soon be increased by three: Bill Gelb, Sandra Jackson, and Herb "Give Me The World And Let Me Boss It" Porter). I sat here in my little home office-which is actually just a corner of the kitchen to which I have added a shelf and a bright light-pounding the keys of my typewriter for nearly five hours last night. Won't be that long tonight; among other things, I have a ma.n.u.script to read. And I am going to read it, I think. The dozen or so pages I got through on my way home have pretty well convinced me that this is the one I've been looking for all along, without even really knowing it.

But at least one person of my recent acquaintance won't be reading it. Not even if it's as great as Great Expectations. (Not that it will be; I have to keep reminding myself that I work at Zenith House, not Random House.) Poor woman. I don't know if she was telling the exact truth about wanting to do us a Good Turn, but even if she was lying through her teeth, no one should have to die like that, dropped out of the sky and crushed to death in a burning steel tube.

I arrived at work even earlier today, wanting to check the mail room. OUIJA says stop wasting your time, she told me. The one you're looking for is in the purple box on the bottom shelf. Way in the corner. I wanted to check that corner even before I put on the coffee. And to get another look at Zenith the ivy, while I was down there.

At first I thought I'd beaten Roger this time, because there was no clackclack from his typewriter. But the light was on, and when I peeked in the open door of his office, there he was, just sitting behind his desk and looking out at the street.

"Morning, boss," I said. I thought he'd be ready and raring to go, but he just sat there in a semi-slump, pale and disheveled, as if he'd spent the whole night tossing and turning.

"I told you not to encourage her," he said without turning from the window.

I walked over and looked out. The old lady with the guitar, the wild white hair, and the sign about letting Jesus grow in your heart was over there in front of Smiler's again. I couldn't hear what she was singing, at least. There was that much.

"You look like you had a tough night," I said.

"Tougher morning. You seen the Times?"

I had, as a matter of fact-the front page, anyway. There was the usual report on Reagan's condition, the usual stuff about unrest in the mideast, the usual corruption-in-government story, and the usual bottom-of-the-page command to support the Fresh Air Fund. Nothing that struck me as of any immediate concern. Nevertheless, I felt a little stirring of the hairs on the back of my neck.

The Times was sitting folded over in the OUT half of Roger's IN/OUT basket. I took it.

"First page of the B section," he said, still looking out the window. At the b.u.m, presumably...or do you call a female of the species a b.u.mette?

I turned to the National Report and saw a picture of an airplane-what was left of one, anyway-in a weedy field littered with cast-off engine parts. In the background, a bunch of people were standing behind a cyclone fence and gawking. I scanned the headline and knew at once.

"Barfield?" I asked.

"Barfield," he agreed.

"Christ!"

"Christ had nothing to do with it."

I scanned the piece without really reading it, just looking for her name.

And there she was: Tina Barfield of Central Falls, source of that old adage "if you play around the buzz-saw too long, sooner or later someone is gonna get cut." Or burned alive in a Cessna t.i.tan, she should have added.

"She said she'd be safe from Carlos if she did a genuine Good Turn," Roger said. "That might lead some to deduce that what she did us was just the opposite."

"I believed her about that," I said. I think I was telling the truth, but whether I was or wasn't, I didn't want Roger deciding to uproot the ivy growing in Riddley's closet because of what had happened to Tina Barfield. Shocked as I was, I didn't want that. Then I saw-or maybe intuited-that Roger's mind wasn't running that way, and I relaxed a little.

"Actually, I did, too," he said. "She was at least trying to do a Good Turn."

"Maybe she just didn't do it soon enough," I said.

He nodded. "Maybe that was it. I read the short story she mentioned, by the way-the one by Jerome Bixby."

"'It's a Good Life.'"

"Right. By the time I'd read two pages, I recognized it as the basis of a famous Twilight Zone episode starring Billy Mumy. What the h.e.l.l ever happened to Billy Mumy?"

I didn't give s.h.i.+t One about what happened to Billy Mumy, but thought it might be a bad idea to say so.

"The story's about a little boy who's a super-psychic. He destroys the whole world, apparently, except for his own little circle of friends and relatives. Those people he holds hostage, killing them if they dare to cross him in any way."

I remembered the episode. The little kid hadn't pulled out anyone's heart or caused any planes to crash, but he'd turned one character-his big brother or maybe a neighbor-into a jack-in-the-box. And when he made a mess, he simply sent it away into the cornfield.

"Based on that, can you imagine what living with Carlos must have been like?" Roger asked me.

"What are we going to do, Roger?"

He turned from the window then and looked at me straight on. Frightened-I was, too-but determined. I respected him for that. And I respect myself, too.

I think.

"We're going to make Zenith House into a profitable concern if we can," he said, "and then we're going to jam about nine gallons of black ink in Harlow Enders's eye. I don't know if that plant is really a modern-day version of Jack's beanstalk or not, but if it is, we're going to climb it and get the golden harp, the golden goose, and all the gold doubloons we can carry. Agreed?"

I stuck out my hand. "Agreed, boss."

He shook it. I haven't had many fine moments before nine in the morning, at least not as an adult, but that was one of them.

"We're also going to be careful," he said. "Agreed there?"

"Agreed." It's only tonight, dear diary, that I realize what you're left with if you take the a out of agreed. I would be telling less than the truth if I didn't say that sort of haunts me.

We talked a little more. I wanted to go down and check on Zenith; Roger suggested we wait for Bill, Herb, and Sandra, then do it together.

LaShonda Evans came in before they did, complaining that the reception area smelled funny. Roger sympathized, suggested it might be mildew in the carpet, and authorized a petty-cash expenditure for a can of Glade, which can be purchased in the Smiler's across the street. He also suggested that she leave the editors pretty much alone for the next couple of months; they were all going to be working hard, he said, trying to live up to the parent company's expectations. He didn't say "unrealistic expectations," but some people can convey a great deal with no more than a certain tone of voice, and Roger is one of them.

"It's my policy not to go any further than right here, Mr. Wade," she said, standing in the door of Roger's office and speaking with great dignity. "You're okay...and so are you, Mr. Kenton...most of the time..."

I thanked her. I've discovered that after your girl has dropped you for

some West Coast smoothie who probably knows Tai Chi and has been rolphed as est-ed to a nicety, even left-handed compliments sound pretty good.

"...but those other three are a little on the weird side."

With that, LaShonda left. I imagine she had calls to make, a few of which might even have to do with the publis.h.i.+ng business. Roger looked at me, amused, and further rumpled his disarranged hair. "She didn't know what the smell was," he said.

"I don't think LaShonda spends a lot of time in the kitchen."

"When you look like LaShonda, I doubt if you need to," Roger said. "The only time you smell garlic is when the waiter brings your Shrimp Mediterranean."

"Meanwhile," I said, "there's Glade. And the garlic-smell will be gone before long, anyway. Unless, of course, you're either a bloodhound or a supernatural houseplant."

We looked at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing. Maybe just because Tina Barfield was dead and we were alive. Not very nice, I know, but the day brightened from that point on; that much, at least, I'm sure of.

Roger had left little notes on Herb's, Sandra's, and Bill's desks. By ninethirty we were all gathered in Roger's office, which doubles as our editorial conference room. Roger began by saying that he thought both Herb and Sandra had been aided in their inspirations, and with no more preamble than that, he told them the story of our trip to Rhode Island. I helped as much as I could. We both tried to express how strange our visit to the greenhouse had been, how otherworldly, and I believe all three of them understood most of that. When it came to Norville Keen, however, I don't think either Roger or I really got the point across.

Bill and Herb were sitting side by side on the floor, as they often do during our editorial conferences, drinking coffee, and I saw them exchange a glance of the kind in which eyeb.a.l.l.s rolling heavenward play a crucial part. I thought about trying to press the point, then didn't. If I may misquote the wisdom of Norville Keen:"You can't believe in a zombie unless you've seen that zombie."

Roger finished the job by handing Bill that day's B section of The New York Times. We waited as it made the rounds.

"Oh, poor woman," Sandra said. She had dragged in her office chair and was sitting in it with her knees primly together. No sitting on the floor for Mr. and Mrs. Jackson's little girl. "I never fly unless I have to. It's much more dangerous than they let on."

"This is c.r.a.p," Bill said. "I mean, I love you, Roger, but this really is c.r.a.p. You've been under pressure-you too, John, especially since you got the gate from your girlfriend-and you guys've just...I don't know...let your imaginations run away with you."

Roger nodded as if he had expected no less. He turned to Herb. "What do you think?" he asked him.

Herb stood up and hitched his belt in that take-charge way of his. "I think we ought to go take a look at the famous ivy plant."

"Me too," Sandra said.

"You guys don't actually believe this, do you?" Bill Gelb asked. He sounded both amused and alarmed. "I mean, let's not dial 1-800-Ma.s.sHYSTERIA just yet, okay?"

"I don't believe or disbelieve anything," Sandra said. "Not for sure. All I know for sure is that I got my idea about the joke-book after I was down there. After I smelled baking cookies. And why would the janitor's room smell like my grandma's kitchen, anyway?"

"Maybe for the same reason the reception area smells like garlic," Bill said. "Because these guys have been playing jokes." I opened my mouth to say that Sandra had smelled cookies and Herb toast and jam in Riddley's cubicle the day before Roger and I made our trip to Central Falls, but before I could, Bill said: "What about the plant, Sandy? Did you see an ivy growing all over the place in there?"

"No, but I didn't turn on the light," she said. "I just peeped my head in, and then...I don't know...I got a little scared. Like it was spooky, or something."

"It was spooky in spite of the smell of gramma's baking cookies, or because of it?" Bill asked. Like a TV-show prosecutor hammering some hapless defense witness.

Sandra looked at him defiantly and said nothing. Herb tried to take her hand, but she shook it off.

I stood up. "Enough talk. Why describe a guest when you can see that guest?"

Bill looked at me as if I'd flipped my lid. "Say what?"

"I believe that in his own inimitable way, John is trying to express the idea that seeing is believing," Roger said. "Let's go have a look. And may I suggest you all keep your hands to yourselves? I don't think it bites-not us, anyway-but I do think we'd be wise to be careful."

It sounded like d.a.m.ned good advice to me. As Roger lead us down the hall past our offices in a little troop, I found myself remembering the last words of the rabbit general in Richard Adams's Waters.h.i.+p Down: "Come back, you fools! Come back! Dogs aren't dangerous!"

When we got to the place where the hall jogs to the left, Bill said: "Hey, hold it, just a G.o.ddam minute." Sounding extremely suspicious. And a little bit spooked, maybe, as well.

"What is it, William?" Herb asked, all innocence. "Smelling something nice?"

"Popcorn," he said. His hands were clenched.

"Good smell, is it?" Roger asked gently.

Bill sighed. His hands opened...and all at once his eyes filled with tears. "It smells like The Nordica," he said. "The Nordica Theater, in Freeport, Maine. It's where we used to go to the show when I was a kid growing up in Gates Falls. It was only open on weekends, and it was always a double feature. There were great big wooden fans in the ceiling and they'd go around during the show...whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...and the popcorn was always fresh. Fresh popcorn with real b.u.t.ter on it in a plain brown bag. To me that's always been the smell of dreams. I just...Is this a joke? Because if it is, tell me right now."

"No joke," I said. "I smell coffee. Five O'Clock brand, and stronger than ever. Sandra, do you still smell cookies?"

She looked at me with dreamy eyes, and right then I sort of understood why Herb is so totally gone on her (yes, we all know it; I think even Riddley and LaShonda know it; the only one who doesn't know it is Sandra herself). Because she was beautiful.

"No," she said, "I smell Shalimar. That was the first perfume I ever had. My Aunt Coretta gave it to me for my birthday, when I was twelve." Then she looked at Bill, and smiled warmly. "That was what dreams smelled like to me. Shalimar perfume."

"Herb?" I asked.

For a minute I didn't think he was going to say anything; he was cheesed at the way she was looking at Bill. But then he must have decided this was a little bit bigger than his crush on Sandra.

"Not toast and jam today," he said. "New car today. To me that's the best smell on earth. It was when I was seventeen and couldn't afford one, and I guess it still is now."

Sandra said, "You still can't afford one."

Herb sighed, shrugged. "Yeah, but...fresh wax...new leather..."

I turned to Roger. "What about-" Then I stopped. Bill was only br.i.m.m.i.n.g, but Roger Wade was outright weeping. Tears ran down his face in two silent streams.

"My mother's garden, when I was very small," he said in a thick, choked voice. "How I loved that smell. And how I loved her."

Sandra put an arm around him and gave him a little hug. Roger wiped his eyes with his sleeve and tried a smile. Did pretty well, too, for someone remembering his beloved dead mother.

Now Bill pushed ahead. I let him, too. We followed him around the corner to the door just left of the drinking fountain, the one marked JANITOR. He threw it open, started to say something smarta.s.s-it might have been Come out, come out, wherever you are-and then stopped. His hands went up in an involuntary warding-off gesture, then dropped again.

"Holy Jesus get-up-in-the-morning," he whispered, and the rest of us crowded around him.