Burning Old Jack

Bubba is always cheerful, but when he handed me what looked like a paint can, he was as solemn as a mortician.

“All’s left of Jack Stone,” he mumbled. Like Bubba, Jack had been a lifelong crop duster. Unmarried, without progeny, he departed this earth with one wish — that Bubba spread his cremated remains over the old Stone family homestead. “The Cub is just right for this job,” Bubba said, nodding toward my little Piper airplane. “I’ll fly and you sit in back. We’ll leave the doors open, and when we get there, I’ll throttle back while you lean out and empty the can.” I wanted no part of this project, but Bubba kept whining about how it was only right to heed Jack’s last need, so I relented.

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Before takeoff, we agreed it would be easier to hold on to a canvas sack during the ceremony, so Bubba pried open the can, revealing a chalk-dust Jack. We were pallid and mute as he poured from can to sack. Airborne, with doors open, the airplane droned toward our destination. The day was hot and windless, and the antique craft labored to reach 3,000 feet. Over the target, Bubba throttled back. Gripping the sack’s bottom with one hand and its open end with the other, I shook the departed’s remains into the slipstream. Instantly, the cockpit filled with fine white powder. As I struggled with the sack, Bubba, blinking at me like a great white-faced barn owl, screamed, “Chunk it out! Chunk it out!” I did, and — whoomph — the sack snagged on the little yellow bird’s tail feathers. Bubba fought the bucking rudder and stick. How in the world would he land this thing? Very gingerly, he turned back toward the airport. Directly in front of us floated a solitary, mysterious, alabaster cloud. It was Jack’s motes — hanging like a fog bank between home and us! Straight through it we flew, emerging with yet another coating of white powder. Approaching the grass airstrip, I saw sweat beads coursing through the chalk dust on Bubba’s neck. With the sack flapping from our tail like a banner, he had no idea what the plane would do when it slowed enough to land. Well, any landing you walk away from is a good one, so goes the old saying, and we were fixing to test the saying. Coated a ghastly white and eyeball to eyeball with the Grim Reaper, the two of us resembled cadavers as the ground loomed upward. When the wheels touched, the Cub jackrabbited skyward a few wobbly leaps and lurched to a stop. A good while later, after pondering the indescribably secure feeling of feet on firm ground, we pulled the sack off the plane’s tail. Looking inside, Bubba discovered a handful of Jack’s ashes. “What should we do with this sack?” he croaked. “Burn it,” I croaked back. Looking piously self-righteous, he reverenced, “Naw, let’s bury what’s left of him. It just wouldn’t be right … burning old Jack.”