Light the fuse

Not the great New Zealand mobilisation novel

An early work-in-progress dedicated to helping,
circuitously, precipitate the Great Mobilisation

Dare to be wise!
Kant

Chapter 15

Work like Helen b Happy

Contents
author Cimino
work-in-progress published 2023
repurposed 20250828

Do you walk in the valley of kings?
Do you walk in the shadow of men
Who sold their lives to a dream?
Do you ponder the manner of things
In the dark?
Barnaby Courtney, 2015

xxx: xxx image xxx

Which of the many, phantom Helen B Happys, was the question. There were countless, over the years, that had enjoyed their time in the sun of Cimino’s drawing board—not all made it that far. Before learning to fully trust his own abilities, not to mention recognise his own shortcomings, Cimino had been enormously comforted by Philip C Bolger’s:

Imaginary boats can be every bit as satisfying as real boats, and much less expensive.

Essex County, Massachusetts Bolger was always going to be dearer to Cimino’s heart than King Country, New Zealand Bolger. This, despite the latter’s ultimately neoliberal-questioning bearings being far closer to Cimino’s Left-of-Karl-Marx compass than Philip C’s determined all-public-space-is-wasted-space Libertarianism. In any event, Cimino had long since decided that political and religious argument was the enemy of the pragmatic imperative to not accelerate the melting of the icecaps.

Relatively recently, the Helen B Happy had been a low-carbon, low-speed, high-wing dieselnon-fossil combustion-ignition-fuel-burning, of course!-electric seaplane. Very briefly, she’d been a latter-day World War II Mosquito, but the best thing she had going, in the visceral-impact stakes, was her twin 27-litre Rolls-Royce Merlin V-12 engines. But while Mosquitos took part in some legendary low-level sorties—famously, Operation Jericho—Cimino had had the enormous privilege of flying through the Western Australian wheat belt, at ultra-low level, something he’d fantasised doing while pushing the family lawnmower, earnestly convinced the engine’s crankshaft could be swivelled from vertical to the horizontal to propel him skyward. The ground-level flight was every bit as thrilling as he’d imagined behind the lawnmower, but what he’d experienced very, very people had, and that was flying in tandem with another aircraft, routinely, so low that the pilot had to pull back on the controls to clear fences, much less trees.

At an only slightly higher altitude, flying to a new district, Cimino was instructed:

You drive; I need to look at the map. Just keep the nose up, and the wings level.

Overhead the main intersection of a wheat-belt town, its layout hadn’t quite computed for Brian. Much lower and Cimino imagined they could have simply read the street signs, or the name on the verandaed hotel. The local hotel was where the team ended up after work every evening. Flying until last light, the sometimes several-hour drive back to base saw the solemn resolution: food first, then the pub. The seven wedged into the Holden nodding in agreement, all ravenously hungry: loader-driver Cimino and marker-boys in the back; pilot, tee-up-boy-cum-driver, and two big egos, in the front. The marker-wheel-pushing, flag-holding spray-swath markers didn’t object being called boys—any day unapprehended was a good day. The type-a salesman, however, objected strenuously to his, pilot-imposed title.

I can do each of your jobs, none of you can do mine.

…was all the redress said tee-up boy was going to get.

Every evening, however, when the company Holden barrelled into it base town, it was only ever going to stop at one place. The pub. Nor was anybody leaving before 10-oclock closing time, and only then with armloads of beer. Self-survival caused Cimino to be cook, in the cavernous caravan he’d towed into town behind the loader-truck at the beginning of the season. After which the food had taken its toll the marker-boys lost consciousness and the pilot and tee-up boy repaired to their resentfully shared motel room.

Next day, groundhog-day, driving up to two hours in the dark, to arrive back at the aircraft and loader truck by dawn.

…

To be continued…

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Disclosure The editor of this content is no longer the secretary of either the Mahurangi Action Incorporated or the Mahurangi Coastal Path Trust. Regardless, the content published here continues to be that of the editorially independent, independently owned and funded Mahurangi Magazine.