Y is for Yarn
The long hours of boredom between missions did a good job of honing various members of the Piston Peaks Air Attack Team's ability to spin a good yarn. Blade rarely told stories, but when he did, he kept every vehicle in earshot riveted to the ground. Maru always managed to keep just enough truth in his tales to keep the listener guessing, and Patch could even make Blade crack a smile when she retold some of the more dubious exploits of the base's inhabitants. Dipper could rattle off a play-by-play of the latest race, and Blackout was surprisingly good at doing impressions…and of course, Windlifter brought his own particular flair to any story he chose to tell. Everyone on base would tell stories at one point or another, but there was one storyteller that the smokejumpers particularly craved. And of course, he was the hardest one to convince to spill the beans. The one exception being when a mission went particularly wrong…
Today had been a particularly bad one. An early morning fire had escaped the boundaries of the park and into a neighboring vacation community. They had eventually gotten the fire out, but houses had burned…Pinecone and Drip were worse for wear…Dynamite was in a hospital burn unit…a civilian had died…everyone on base was feeling like an utter failure. It was the type of day that broken teams.
Maru had spent the entire evening patching Pinecone and Drip up, while trying to not fret about Dynamite's condition. Knowing that after the mess of today, no one was going to be deploying to the field tomorrow morning, he worked long into the night filling out paperwork.
He finally surfaced from his reports at two in the morning and decided to check on his patients. Rolling into the Smokejumper's hanger, he found it cold and dark. By the looks of it, Maru doubted that anyone had been in it all night. Luckily, he knew the Smokejumpers well, and there was only one place they would be.
As Maru approached, he could make out the faint light of a lantern and could hear Cabbie voice pouring out, like the surf lapping across a beach. The mechanic quietly made his way across the tarmac and slowly pried the hanger door just enough to peek in. When Maru made eye contact with the plane inside, he gave him a soft smile and a slight spin of his right propeller to acknowledge the mechanic, but otherwise remained still, the flow of his story completely uninterrupted.
Looking at the scene in front of him, made the plane's actions that much more impressive. Pinecone was leaning up on the plane's left landing gear in a way that would make Cabbie mighty sore in the morning, but the C-119 didn't acknowledge the discomfort he must be feeling in any way. He stayed frozen, allowing the broken machine to gain comfort by clinging to him. Drip had been a little more practical, but still was ignoring any sense of personal space. The little ground pounder had wedged himself partway under Cabbie's fuselage. Blackout had clearly drifted off under the wing of the plan, as his soft snoring was currently providing another layer of rhythm to Cabbies' winding tale.
Out of the group, only Avalanche stood apart. He was only half sheltered under Cabbies' wing and he held his frame more rigidly, as though the little dozer was trying to force himself to stay awake. At one glance, Maru knew what he was trying to do. With Dynamite injured and in the hospital, Avalanche was doing his best to keep the team safe. He was doing his best to temporarily roll into Dynamite's tire tracks and keep watch over his injured teammates. But even as Maru peered through the crack in the hanger door, the mechanic could see Cabbies' story work his magic and some of the tension in Avalanche's frame dissolve as the dozer moved closer to the sleep he so badly needed.
Cabbie continued to talk about training for air shows in Georgia. About tarmac baked under the southern sun until it was so hot that it was gummy under his tires and he almost thought he might stick to it like a fly sticks to flypaper when he came into a landing. He spoke about air so thick with humidity that it felt like you could cut it with a wing and how he had wondered if this is what a submarine felt like cutting through the sea. Then he spoke about what it had been like to fly at night, with an ocean of stars above him and a sea of fireflies below. And how that had made the oppressive heat bearable, because at night he knew that he would be able to fly and see that sight again.
Cabbie spoke of inconsequential things, but he did so with such detail that you could forget that you were sitting in a hanger high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. You could become so absorbed in his story that for a fleeting moment, you could forget the nightmare of the past 24 hours. Watching smokejumpers sheltering under the old C-119's wings, Maru couldn't help but have a ghost of a smile dance across his lips. Because while Blade was the base's leader, Dynamite was the team's stubbornness, and Avalanche had somehow become its heart, Cabbie was clearly the team's anchor…the one who made the Piston Peaks Air Attack Base a home.
Knowing that the smokejumpers were well taken care of, Maru gave Cabbie a final nod before shutting the hanger door and heading back out into the night. For a few long moments, the mechanic just let the moment sink in. He felt the coolness of the night air on his skin and listened continued to listen to Cabbie's voice drawl on about the blue of the Atlantic stretching to the horizon, now slightly muffled by the hanger door. He paused and let the words wash over him.
Then he started to move again. Blade's hanger light was still on…Maru needed some oil…and on a night like this evening he didn't want to drink it alone.
Term- Yarn- A long often winding tell. This term is often used to describe a story that has been embellished for the entertainment of the listener. There are a number of people on base who have mastered the art of spinning a good yarn.