I had to admire my father's perfect timing. If I could build the autogyro in three days, I would have it ready in time for my birthday.
I brought Meeko inside so that the man could put the boxes in the garage. Then I had to convince Aunt Speed that the kit belonged to me. My father has almost the same name I do--he's Brian William O'Brien and I'm William Brian O'Brien. We both go by our middle names. Everybody calls him Bill. They call me Brian to avoid confusion.
Aunt Speed thought the boxes belonged to dad.
"What would dad do with an autogyro?" I asked. "He never even reads Popular Coptering when I take it out of the library."
"That's as may be," said Aunt Speed. "We'll find out soon enough when your parents come home."
"But don't you see? They timed it so I would have the autogyro on my birthday. You don't want to ruin my birthday, do you?"
She didn't want to ruin my birthday. "If you're sure your father meant for you to have it."
"I'm sure. Who else would send me an autogyro?"
Callie rang the doorbell. "Callie," I said. "Guess what I got for my birthday."
"An autogyro," said Callie.
"How'd you know?" I asked. She didn't look at all surprised. At the time I thought that she was so worried about Squirrel that she couldn't feel any other emotion. She was standing at the side door next to her bicycle. She had a big cardboard box with holes punched into it. A sad mewing came from inside the box. Meeko was jumping up against the screen door and sniffing. Then he poked the door with his nose, a sign that he wanted me to let him out.
"Meeko," I said. "Upstairs."
Meeko growled.
"Get moving," I said. He went up the stairs to the kitchen grumbling all the way. I shut the kitchen door and stepped outside. The kitchen door kept rattling. Meeko must have been bumping into it. I heard him snuffling in the space between the door and the linoleum.
"I told you not to bring him over," I said. "I have to get permission before I do things."
"Just let me show him to your aunt. She'll like Squirrel. I know she will."
"That's not the point," I said. She was one weird kid. It went beyond the way she looked. It even went beyond the way she spent so much time by herself fiddling with computers, or the way she would start crying if things didn't come out according to plan. Maybe she was spoiled. Sometimes she did things even Timo wouldn't do. One time she stole some wax lips and candy cigarettes from the store on the corner. She said it wasn't really stealing because nobody got hurt. It was a store and not a person. And besides, the store had plenty of wax lips and candy cigarettes. I didn't argue with her. But I didn't like her reasoning.
So now here she was trying to give me her cat without even talking it over with her parents first.
"I asked Aunt Speed if we could keep the cat until my parents get back from Ireland. She said she'd think about it."
Callie just stood there. She didn't know what to do next.
"Let's go unpack my autogyro kit," I said. "I want to read the instructions."
In the garage Callie put the box down. "Can I let him out?" she asked.
"Sure," I said. I had my Swiss army knife out and was hacking away at the tape in one of the autogyro cartons.
"Maybe I'd better close the door first."
"Callie, it's hot. It's summer. You're giving me your cat because you don't want to have to keep him closed up in your garage. So now we close him up in my garage? Does that make sense?"
"Yeah, but we're here to keep him company."
"And what about when we're not?"
"I don't know."
"What's going to keep him here? He'll just find his way back to your house as soon as you leave."
"I never thought of that."
"Unless I keep him locked up. But in that case, he might as well stay locked up at your house."
"Don't you want a cat?" she asked. "I thought you liked Squirrel."
"I do."
"Maybe if we keep him here for a while he'll get used to it and want to stay."
"Maybe," I said. By this time I had two boxes open. The stuff in them looked like plumbing supplies--pipes and joints. I picked up one of the pipes. It hardly weighed anything. It must have been aluminum or something even lighter, if there is anything lighter.
The instructions were in the second box. I sat down on one of the unopened boxes and started reading them. Callie sat down on a overturned bucket and opened Squirrel's box. "I have the litter box right here," she said. She took it out and put it in the corner of the garage. "I'll just put it over here for the time being."
"Quiet," I said. "I'm trying to read." I read a paragraph that sounded like a version of the magazine ad. Then I started reading how to put the autogyro together. The instructions didn't make much sense. "What's this supposed to mean?" I said to myself.
"What?"
"I'll read it to you," I said. "Have courtesy read all direction before assemblage. Attach main body center spar to first support rib using patented joint. Have care use both patented glue and screw-in technique. Proceed to second support rib and do similar reversing all procedure for first. Continue until all support rib in place. See fig one. This constitutes sub-assembly A."
"Sounds like a Japanese technical manual I saw once."
"Japanese?"
"Translated into English. Sort of." Callie was holding Squirrel on her lap. He was purring now. "My father said that the Japanese study English for years and years in school. It's a required subject."
"Whoever wrote this should have gone to summer school."
The whole manual was written in the same style. It ended with the sentence "Ten-thousand years!" What was that supposed to mean? The illustrations made sense though. I could see how the autogyro was supposed to fit together. It was just a matter of matching the pipes and joints in the boxes to the corresponding drawings.
"I can do it," I said.
"You want to hold the cat?" She tried to hand Squirrel over. He was limp as a shoelace. "He likes you," she said.
"I want to get started on the autogyro," I said.
"Do you like it?"
"Do I like it? Of course I like it."
"I thought you would."
"It's the greatest present I ever got."
"Glad to be of service."
What did she mean by that?
CHAPTER TEN
Aunt Speed said that until my parents came home I could keep Squirrel in the basement. It hadn't occurred to me to let him in the house. I was imagining that he would live in the garage, the way he did at Callie's house. The basement was the coolest part of the house in the summer. I liked to go down there to get out of the sun. I'd enjoy playing with Squirrel a lot more down there than in the hot garage.
By the time Callie went home to supper, I had sub-assembly A all put together. "A child of nine could do it in a weekend," I said when she got on her bicycle.
"What?"
"Never mind. See you tomorrow?"
"Same time, same channel. Five-fifteen by the Nazarene."
I had forgotten about the paper route. I was glad Callie reminded me. "See you then," I said.
At supper I couldn't concentrate on my food. Meeko kept sniffing the space at the bottom of the kitchen door. Then he would bump his nose against it.
Aunt Speed thought it was funny. "Where's the cat?" she said. "Get him, Meeko." Then she would cackle like one of the witches you read about in fairy tales. A couple of times I squeezed through the door, so that I could keep Meeko back with my body, and found the cat on the top step. I would take him back down the basement and tell him, "Stay!" He just ignored me. I tried to build a barricade to keep him down there, but he just jumped to the top of it and down the other side. I played with him for a while that evening, and then I went upstairs and played with Meeko. I didn't want to start neglecting him.
It wasn't hard to remember to feed Squirrel. I was already in charge of feeding Meeko. Callie said that she would pay for the catfood until my parents came back and agreed that Squirrel could be my cat. He ate dry food that smelled a little stronger than dry dogfood and was star-shaped instead of in nuggets.
The next day the paper route went a little faster. Callie went back to bed, and I started working on the autogyro. I finished sub-assembly B after lunch. Callie came over. It was getting hot. We carried the sub-assemblies down to the basement. Callie helped me carry the boxes down too. They were lighter now that I had used some of the parts.
That afternoon we had Squirrel for company as we put together sub-assembly C. It was quite a bit bigger than sub- assemblies A and B. The manual said, "When finish sub-assemblies A through C proceed with integration number one." That meant to connect the three sub-assemblies together in a certain way. The illustration showed how.
The next day was my birthday. Aunt Speed was making a layer cake--devil's food with chocolate frosting--and Callie was invited to stay for supper. The autogyro was starting to look like a giant praying mantis.
Aunt Speed was making a lot of chicken. I like chicken better than anybody, but I couldn't eat as much as she was making. "We'll have it for leftovers tomorrow," she said. "Better have too much than have too little."
I started working really fast on the autogyro. I wanted to finish it on my birthday. The thermometer outside had gone up to ninety. I was enjoying the cool of the basement, the damp smell, the company of Callie. She was a big help because she agreed to be a helper. I mean she didn't keep giving her opinions of other ways I should do everything. She just held parts of the machine up or down or however I asked her to hold them. The manual usually referred to the parts as "structural members," if they belonged to the frame, or as "aerodynamic components," if they belonged to the rotor. Callie and I got silly about this terminology. I would say, "Bring me another structural member." She would say, "Like this?" I would say, "Any idiot could see that's not a structural member. That's an aerodynamic component."
We were both in for a big disappointment. I was feeling the way I do when I read a book I really like. I want to finish it before I go to sleep. But I get more and more drowsy, and pretty soon I'm not reading, even though my eyes are going from one word to another. I hadn't had any rest since we finished delivering papers. The night before I hadn't slept well. I was too excited. I kept thinking that I could finish the autogyro the next day.
We started to put the third blade on the rotor. It was the last step in the last sub-assembly. "It's not going to fit," said Callie.
"Wait a minute," I said. "Let it stick out next to the furnace."
"Then how do we get it up the stairs?"
I hadn't thought of that. "O.K.," I said. "We'll take it up now and put the rotor on outside." The rotor was designed to be carried apart from the frame anyway. The blades stuck out so far that you couldn't pull the autogyro behind a car without the blades bumping into telephone poles or smashing the windshields of cars coming the other way. You were supposed to put the blades on the top of your car, tow the frame behind, and then assemble the whole thing when you got someplace safe to fly it.
Only one thing stopped us from carrying the frame and the rotor blades up the stairs separately. The frame itself was much too big to fit. It wouldn't make it onto the landing by the kitchen, no matter which way we turned. It certainly wouldn't make it out the door.
I almost started to cry that time. I didn't though. But I think even adults come close to crying when they're frustrated. They usually yell instead. "Callie," I said. "Why didn't you say something?" I assumed that a genius like Callie would have thought of something as simple as the law that you can't fit a five-foot-wide object through a three-foot-wide door.
"Don't yell at me. It's not my fault."
"Who's yelling? I'm just a little upset, that's all."
I was so tired that my stupid mistake seemed like one of the great tragedies of history. "I'm going to bed," I said.
"You want me to go home?"
"No. Just hang around until supper time. Aunt Speed won't mind."
"Can I play with Meeko?"
"Of course you can play with Meeko. What kind of a stupid question is that?" I started up the stairs.
"Uh, Brian?"
"What?"
"One of these boxes still has parts in it."
"You mean aerodynamic components."
"No. Structural members."
Neither one of us was joking now. I went to see for myself. Sure enough, I had done something wrong. There were several parts left over and there shouldn't have been any.
"Listen," I said. "I'm going to get some rest. I'll worry about it later." But you can't postpone a worry. I thought about it furiously as I fell asleep.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Brian," called Aunt Speed. "Supper time."
I woke up feeling almost as bad as I did Christmas day. I came downstairs rubbing the sand out of the corners of my eyes.
"Surprise!" What? In the dining room around the table sat the five members of the Garafano family. They were my best friends, the neighbors who had moved away.
Mr. Garafano was a ham. I usually don't like to call amateur radio operators hams, but the name fit him perfectly. He looked a lot like a pig. I don't mean to insult him. You have to remember that I like pigs. I think when people call a disgusting person a pig it's an insult to pigs. The same goes for hogs and swine. Pigs are really intelligent creatures, and have a good reason for everything they do. They wallow in the mud to get cool in summer. What's so disgusting about that?
Mr. Garafano helped me get my novice ticket when I was a kid. The easiest kind of license you can get is called a novice license. Amateur radio operators refer to a license as a ticket. I don't know why. They seem to love secret names for everything, calling extremely low power rigs QRP or calling code transmissions CW. There's an explanation for these letters, though. When you're sending code, you try to find all the short cuts you can. Nobody wants to spell everything out.
Mr. Garafano taught me the little bit of electronics I needed to pass the test and practiced code with me, even though it must have been boring to send and receive code at such a slow rate. Novices only have to be able to do five words per minute. Any moron can learn to do that in about a week. It doesn't take long to learn the electronics either. You just have to know easy stuff like the definition of a diode or how a power supply works. You also have to know a little about the laws that amateur radio operators have to obey.
Mrs. Garafano had brought a casserole dish full of chicken cacciatore. "I know chicken is your favorite," she said to me.
"You didn't have to do that," said Aunt Speed.
"In Italian cacciatore means hunter," said Mrs. Garafano. Mrs. Garafano used to talk about the old country, and when I was a kid it confused me. Aunt Speed would also talk about the old country, and their stories didn't match. I was so dumb that Aunt Speed had to explain to me that there are lots of different old countries. Our old country was Ireland. The Garafanos' old country was Italy. So in the middle of the summer Mrs. Garafano might say, "It never gets this green in the old country." And when I was still a kid I might ask Aunt Speed, "How come it never gets this green in the old country?" And she might say, "What ever gave you that idea? The old country's the greenest place on earth."
The kids in the Garafano family were like cousins to me. I would say that Tony was like a brother, except that I always got along better with Tony than with Timo. The three of us used to hang out together all the time.
The two girls, Rosa and Maria, were both older than me and Tony. But when we were all kids they used to play with us.
"Can I call Pizza?" asked Rose.
"Don't ask me," said Mrs. Garafano. "Ask Mrs. Kane." She meant Aunt Speed.
"Mrs. Kane, can we call Pizza?" asked Rose.
"Can we call Emily too?" asked Maria.
"Can Pizza and Emily come over for a little while?" asked Rose.
"Rosa!"
"It's all right," said Aunt Speed. "They haven't seen their friends in a long time."
"Mama," Rose was saying at the same time. "You promised not to call me Rosa any more." Rose hates it when you call her Rosa.
"Can we call them?" asked Maria. "Can we tell them to come over?"
"Dinner's almost ready," said Aunt Speed. "But we seem to have no shortage of food. Ask them if they want to eat with us."
Pizza was the girl down the street, the one who ratted her hair. She didn't like us to call her Pizza, but everybody did. When she was small she couldn't say Theresa. It came out sounding like Pizza. She's been Pizza ever since.
Emily was the girl next door.
Both of them were allowed to come for supper. We said grace. I think Emily was a little embarrassed by the way everybody made the sign of the cross. She was the only one there who wasn't Catholic.
There weren't any leftovers after all. Mr. Garafano had extra helpings of everything and kept complimenting Aunt Speed on her cooking. I complimented Mrs. Garafano to balance him out. I had seconds of chicken cacciatore. Mrs. Garafano said, "Don't be bashful," and put a third helping on my plate.
The pieces of cake were small, but I didn't mind. The Garafanos had brought vanilla ice cream. I couldn't have eaten one bite more no matter how much I liked the taste.
"And now," said Mr. Garafano, "for part two of the surprise, we're going over to my place." The Garafanos had a ping-pong table and a swimming pool.
"Can Callie come too?" I asked.
"Can Pizza come too?" asked Rose.
"Can Emily come too?" asked Maria.
"My mom wouldn't let me," said Emily.
"I have a date," said Pizza.
Rose almost choked. "Who is it," she asked.
"Wilton Post."
"Wilton Post! Wilton Post asked you out?"
"Sure," said Pizza.
"We never should have moved away," said Rose.
Wilton Post was this clown across the street. He lifted weights and thought he looked like Robert Redford. He wouldn't know a diode from a lightbulb. In fact, he didn't know anything worth knowing. He couldn't talk about anything but body building and football.
The girls kept twittering about Wilton Post. Callie called home and got permission to come with us to the Garafanos'. They had a station wagon, so there was enough room for the two of us. There certainly wasn't room for anybody else.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It took about an hour to get to the Garafanos' house. "Did you see our new pool table?" asked Tony. "Come on, I'll play you a game."
"Oh no," I said. "I forgot to show you my autogyro."
"Your what?"
"Callie, why didn't you remind me?"
"How come you blame me? All of a sudden everything's my fault."
"All right, all right," I said.
"If it wasn't for me--"
"I'm sorry."
"What are you talking about?" asked Tony. We were down in the Garafanos' rec room now.
"Let's play ping-pong," said Callie.
"I'd rather play pool," said Tony.
"Ping-pong's better," said Callie.
"I can play ping-pong any time," said Tony. "The pool table's new."
Tony wasn't exactly the most logical person in the world. "Now that you have the pool table, you can play pool any time too," I said. "Let's go swimming."
"Let's flip a coin," said Callie.
"It's my house," said Tony.
"It's my birthday," I said.
"He's got a point," said Callie.
"O.K.," said Tony. "We'll swim for a while and then play pool. But first tell me about this gyroscope thing."
I told him about the autogyro while we were going upstairs to put on swimming suits. He wouldn't believe me. Callie told him it was true. I told him to skip it.
The Garafanos keep extra swim suits for guests. Callie and I found some that would fit us and went out to the pool. I hadn't gone swimming since the summer before. I knew how to swim and so did Tony. We had both gone to the city pool to take a course in Junior Lifesaving. Callie didn't know how to swim at all. Tony and I had to spend most of our time in the shallow end to be polite.
It was O.K. though. Tony had this big rubber block. You could let it sink to the bottom and then race to retrieve it. Tony had goggles and fins, so he had the advantage. Callie walked instead of swimming and wouldn't open her eyes under water. She almost never got the block first. One time when Tony said go, Callie got out of the pool and ran along the side. She jumped in right next to the block, held onto the edge, an picked the block up between her feet. She grabbed it with her free hand and stood there holding above her head. Tony and I didn't mind. She was cheating, of course. But unless she pulled some kind of trick, she didn't have a chance. I had a good time. It would have been more fun to dive for the block in the deep water, but you have to make allowances for your friends.
"Brian!" Mr. Garafano was calling me. "Come on in. It's time for the second half of your surprise." I wondered what he meant. I thought the visit to the Garafanos was the surprise.
"Before you do anything else," said Mrs. Garafano, "dry yourselves off an put your clothes on."
"Meet you in the radio shack when you're ready," said Mr. Garafano.
Mr. Garafano had old fashioned equipment in his radio shack. Nowadays radio equipment tends to be compact. A whole circuit can be made smaller than a single capacitor used to be. Mr. Garafano's equipment was so ancient that it used vacuum tubes. He had a one-kilowatt transmitter--that's a thousand watts--that stood seven feet high. My QRP rig puts out less than one watt, so you can imagine how powerful Mr. Garafano's transmitter was.
Mr. Garafano liked to use old-fashioned radiotelephone. He didn't have any interest in CW. He considered code a nuisance, a test you have to pass in order to get your license. When we came into the radio shack, he was already in contact with somebody. "Here he is," I heard him say. "I'll turn him over to you." He got up and let me sit in front of the microphone. The seat was warm. I hate to sit down on a warm seat.
The next voice I heard was my mother's. "Brian?" she said. "Happy birthday." Then I heard a voice with an Irish accent in the background telling my mother to let go of the switch on the microphone.
I heard my father's voice next: "You have to let go of the button."
"Mom," I said when she let go of the button. "What's going on?" It was a stupid question. Obviously my parents and the Garafanos and some radio operator in Ireland had arranged ahead of time to meet on a certain frequency at a certain time.
"Are you surprised?" asked my mother.
"Am I ever," I said.
"Do you want to talk to your father? Here he is."
Then there was some static, and my father came on. "Mr. Grogan says to tell you you're coming through five by five, whatever that means." It meant loud and clear. "He wants to know how he's coming through." My father can never think of anything to say when he talks to you long distance on the phone. I think he was glad Mr. Grogan had solved this problem for him.
"Can I talk to them?" asked Callie. She seemed excited to be talking to Ireland.
"You're coming through about three by two. Quite a bit of interference. Callie wants to say hello."
"Mr. O'Brien? This is Callie." Then she couldn't think of anything to say next. After a pause she said, "Over and out."
"Why'd you say that?" I asked. "That means we don't want to transmit any more."
The next transmission was really garbled. Radio communication isn't like using the telephone. You never know when the interference is going to get bad, especially when you're in contact with someone far away.
We tried to raise them again, but it didn't work. Our signal was stronger than theirs, so I sent a last message before I turned the microphone back over to Mr. Garafano. "Thanks for all the surprises," I said. "Especially the autogyro. It's the best birthday I ever had." Maybe they heard me. Maybe they didn't. I was sorry I forgot to thank them earlier.
"Thanks," I said to Mr. Garafano.
"Too bad it didn't last longer," he said.
"No," I said. "It was fine. You went to a lot of trouble."
"We couldn't let you celebrate your birthday all alone. You need your family around you on your birthday."
The Garafanos did seem like part of my family.
We got to play pool and ping-pong. We had Mr. Garafano come down so that we could play two against two. "The Italians against the Irish," said Tony.
"Callie's not Irish," I said. Callie wasn't anything in particular. Her family didn't have an old country.
Tony kept calling it the Italians against the Irish anyway. The Italians won at pool, but the Irish won at ping-pong. Callie knew how to spin and slam better than anyone I've ever seen. I guess she didn't spend all her time messing with her computer.
Mr. Garafano drove us back to my house. Callie couldn't get off the topic of amateur radio. "Do hams use computers?"
"Sure," said Mr. Garafano. "It's one of the biggest things now. The young kids got to have everything computerized. They got satellites too."
"Satellites?"
"Sure. Hams put communications satellites into orbit. So they can bounce signals off of them. You know."
Everybody knows about satellites. But not many people realize that groups of private citizens can send them into orbit as part of their hobby. I told my mother about it and she thought I was putting her on.
"What can you do with a computer if you're a ham?"
"For one thing, you can program it to transmit and receive the international code," said Mr. Garafano. "Then you just type a message into the computer and receive the answer in letters on your television screen."
"Takes all the fun out of it," I said. But code was never fun for Mr. Garafano in the first place.
Mr. Garafano dropped me off at my house, put Callie's bike in the car, and gave her a ride home.
"Did you enjoy yourself?" asked Aunt Speed.
"Yeah," I said. "I talked to mom and dad in Ireland."
"Imagine that," said Aunt Speed. I thought she would ask how I could do such a thing, but she obviously knew all about it. "I'd like to talk to Ireland someday. Did you ask if you could keep the cat?"
"Idiot!" I said. I hit myself in the forehead.
"Pardon me?"
"I'm just calling myself an idiot," I said. "First I build the autogyro in the basement, then I forget to mention Squirrel."
"No reason to be hitting yourself in the head," said Aunt Speed. "It'll keep."
And to tell the truth, I didn't feel bad at all. I fell asleep right away. I woke up feeling cheerful. I enjoyed delivering papers. I couldn't think why I had been so upset. It took only a few hours to reduce the autogyro to its sub- assemblies. They all fit through the door, even sub-assembly C. By that afternoon we had the autogyro set up in the driveway. Pizza came to watch. This time I studied the instructions more carefully, and there were no extra parts when we got done.
Next Section of Brian's Story.