Apart from anything the group hoped to accomplish by blitzing Mobley’s farm with a hundred pounds of kitchen garbage, the helicopter ride had its own rewards. En route to the farmhouse, they passed over verdant fields resplendent in the glory of an early September afternoon. Patchwork fields, in shades of green and brown, stretched from one farmstead to another. Here and there, from high up, a farmer’s tractor could be seen plowing the brown earth after a season of abundant growth. From high over, along with dairy cows browsing on lush grass, they caught a glimpse of a foal and its mother racing across a green meadow. A woman, pinning freshly washed bed sheets to a clothesline, looked up and waved. Sunlight glinted off the metal roofs of barns, and a threadlike, silver stream of water, flowing through a green pasture, glimmered in the distance.
Enthralled by the view, Heidi shouted over the noise of the rotors: “We should all get up here once in a while, where we can take a good look at what Mother Earth has to offer, and to see what we’re in danger of losing.”
“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” Uncle Sullivan agreed, shouting back at her over his shoulder. “You should take a ride over the Cascades sometime. Now there’s a sight to behold.”
“We’ll have to do that, won’t we?” Heidi said to the others.
Tony, who had been sitting stiffly the whole time, holding his bag of garbage like a war refugee clutching a travel bag containing the few belongings he’s managed to salvage, nodded.
“Yeah…it’s really great. We oughta do it more often.”
Carlos, sitting next to him, grinned. “Why don’t you take a few pictures while we’re up here, Tony? Something to put in your portfolio for future references?”
“That’s all right. I’ll wait till we get there.”
“Aerial photography’s a big business, you know. You could make some real money at it.”
“I’ll wait till we get there.”
“Be a shame to miss out…”
Saying nothing more, Tony continued to look straight ahead.
“How much longer?” Mitch asked.
“We’re almost there, aren’t we?” Heidi answered, leaning forward.
“Two stories, with a green roof and a white flagpole out front, right?”
Lisa, who had driven down from Portland with Heidi to scout the area and pinpoint the location of the farmhouse, added that the property was littered with two or three junked automobiles and a discarded camper trailer, all sitting in high grass between the backyard and the barn. “And the barn itself has patches of moss on it.”
“Be hard to miss,” Uncle Sullivan hollered back. “But I think we’re coming up on it now, just ahead.”
Heidi craned forward in her seat to look through the windshield. “Yeah, that’s it. But he forgot to put his flag up.”
“He’ll have more to think about than that. Pull the door handle open and slide the door back. I’m gonna stand over.”
The hovering maneuver required small but smoothly coordinated manipulations of the controls. It meant bringing the aircraft in over the backyard and holding a ground position for the duration of the operation. From a hundred feet up, with a two-story house on one side and a couple of trees on the other, a balance of factors had to be achieved; rpms, elevation, and a proper heading all had to be maintained. The pilot had to be keenly alert to everything happening. The operation was off the record in any case, and, for that reason, a careless mishap was certainly all the more out of the question. Two tours in Vietnam and numerous mountain rescue missions since then constituted a body of expertise, but predictability, or the likelihood of nothing going wrong, could never be taken as a given. It didn’t pay to be overconfident.
Skillfully feathering the controls, Uncle Sullivan eased in over the large trees in the backyard until the craft hung directly over thirty feet of lawn between the back porch and a ragged field of high grass and abandoned autos.
“Let’s do it!” he called out. “And don’t waste time!”
Mitch and Carlos sat in the two rearmost seats; they were the designated handlers because of their position.
Mitch tossed out his own bag first. Holding it in his hands, as one might hand off a baby, he turned sidewise in his seat and pitched it outward.
Caught in the downdraft of the spinning blades, it fell a hundred feet through the air and flumped onto the grassy surface below. Already weakened by a couple of knife slits administered earlier, prior to being loaded onto the flatbed, it burst apart. Like a piñata spewing forth toys and candies of various colors and sizes, out plopped eggshells, banana and orange peels, tomatoes, heads of lettuce and cabbage, watermelon and honeydew melon rinds, potato peels, empty fruit containers, glass jars, a few tin cans, and even a couple of gnawed dog bones.
“Wow! Look at that!” Tony exclaimed, peering down and for the moment forgetting any anxiety he had felt previously. “I gotta get a picture of that, for sure!”
Hastily, he flung his own bag into the air and brought his camera up to his eye. With a rapid adjustment of the focus, he leaned over the edge of the open hatch and clicked off a succession of shots.
Turning to look at everyone, he grinned.
“This’ll for sure get someone’s attention.” He laughed, rubbing his hands together. “I can hardly wait to get these developed.”
“It’s not over yet,” Heidi said with a grin.
“Yeah, let’s do it!” Carlos whooped and handed his bag to Mitch, who took it and heaved it out the hatch, where it plummeted to the ground. “Heidi, yours is next!” Carlos shouted.
Heidi passed her bag to Tony.
His face wrapped in a gleeful expression, as though suddenly released from all feelings of restraint and inhibition, Tony grabbed it and launched it into the air. Hardly waiting for it to hit the ground, he had his camera up to his eye and, just as eagerly, was firing off shots as quickly as a war correspondent intuitively capturing a series of pictures bound to make him famous.
Undoing his safety belt, Carlos knelt down on his seat. One by one, he handed the remaining bags to Mitch.
Like a newspaper vendor hustling to unload the back of his truck, Mitch took each one and chucked it outward. Under the downward rush of air, they all tumbled precipitously to the grassy surface below.
In less than three minutes, the helicopter had been relieved of its cargo. All ten bags had been cast overboard and now littered Mobley Johnson’s backyard. Kitchen garbage had been blown every which way, in all directions. Banana peels, eggshells, and scraps of paper had soared off into the tall grass adjacent to the lawn; lettuce leaves and tomatoes had smacked against the back of the house; fruit rinds and tin cans lay scattered about the driveway; an updraft had even pitched one of the bags against a lone lilac bush so that it resembled an enlarged, bloated eggplant with its innards hanging out. The whole scene looked as though a dozen hungry raccoons had raided several garbage cans, leaving the contents spread all over the yard.
“Did we do it or did we not!” Carlos hollered, pumping the air with his fist.
“You bet we did!” Heidi cried triumphantly, exchanging high-fives with everyone.
“I hope he likes surprises!” Tony laughed.
“We’ll send him pictures for his family album!” Mitch put in.
“I’ll have them all framed!”
Carlos laughed. “And send him the bill.”
Uncle Sullivan looked over his shoulder.
“I’m gonna pull away now,” he said. “But I’ll bring ’er around so you can get some panoramics. How’d that be?”
“Right on!” Tony said, holding his camera up for more shots.
Uncle Sullivan brought the craft above and away from the house and then allowed it to hover momentarily at an angle conducive to a broad shot of the scene. Making an expert adjustment to the lens, Tony snapped off one picture after another until he had added a dozen more to the roll.
“That’ll do ’er?” asked Sullivan.
“You bet!” Tony shouted happily.
“Close the hatch!”
“Oh, my God! We forgot these!” Lisa called out, holding up a sheaf of papers.
“I’ll make one more pass and that’ll have to do it.”
Lisa handed the papers to Heidi, who gave them to Mitch. As Uncle Sullivan swung the craft around and over the backyard again, Mitch gave the bundle an underhanded toss into the air. Like confetti swirling out of an upper-story window on a blustery day, the downward draft sent individual sheets flying off helter-skelter everywhere.
“We’re headed for home now, guys! Close the hatch and hang on!”
Beginning a gradual ascent, Uncle Sullivan circled out and over the housetop and crossed the open field of high grass. Flying off in a northeasterly direction, he left the farmstead rapidly behind.