#Ellington Field

[nocternalrandomness]

Helldiver against a golden sunset

[salemlinnet]

Hello there! I've been greatly appreciative of your ghostsoap 'domesticated' comic (it's brilliant) so I decided to check out your original webcomic 'thistle and spade' out of curiosity and it's really really really good. I have devoured the first 6 chapters and then I had to stop myself because I have actual work to do but I'll definitely read more in the following days. I love how you have managed to give every character their own unique personality, even the secondary one, and I love the two main characters! They are lovely. I love them all and I love your webcomic. I really like how you wrote the dialogues too. Sorry for fangirling in your ask box, but I felt like I should show my appreciation in some way to your project you have spent so many years on.

P. S. I've been reading through thistleandspade.com/arc and the link to Chapter 0 is broken. Maybe you already know but if you didn't I felt like you would have liked to get notified of this.

kasfhlkhf thank you so much i'm dying

thank you thank you i really hope you enjoy the rest of the story! chapter 6 is one of my favorites, a good resting spot for sure! i really love all the characters so i'm so happy that others like them as well.

thanks for your time! feel free to hit me up any time.

also, i think i've fixed the error in the archive. thanks so much for letting me know! <3 <3 <3

-j

[h00dsw0rld]

James Ellington

[rambleonwaywardson]

Clegan Astronaut AU - Epilogue

Masterpost Read on AO3

AU Summary: the boys as modern day NASA astronauts. Taking place in 2025, Bucky is heading to the moon as mission commander of Artemis III while Buck is CAPCOM at NASA. Established relationship (obnoxiously in love).

Author's Note: We made it. Thank you a million times over to every single one of you who has engaged with this story. It means a lot to have you along for the ride.

---

Something funny happens when you fly faster than the speed of sound, nothing but a hunk of metal separating you from the sky. Time doesn’t seem to work right anymore; everything can move slow and fast all at once. You take a breath. It feels peaceful, somehow. Sacred. 

Even when you pull so many Gs that it presses a stone to your chest and strangles your lungs until they burn, as long as you can push through the tunnel vision and the dizziness, suddenly everything becomes clearer. Perspective, some might say. Others just call it exhilaration. Freedom. The feeling of being alive.

Bucky Egan is seriously addicted to that feeling. For months now, he’s gone without it. He spends more time than he should standing out at JSC’s Ellington Field, closing his eyes and breathing deeply as other astronauts perform flight tests and training exercises overhead. He listens to the rumbling sounds of the jets, wondering if he’ll ever be up there again. Free.

A jet, a prop plane, a space capsule. He’d take any one of them, really, if he can’t have all of them anymore. 

Some things are written in stone. Bucky knew seemingly out of the womb that he wanted to fly. He wouldn’t settle for anything else, wouldn’t settle at all. He was going to become an Air Force pilot, and then – once he learned that there were real people flying aboard something called the Space Station, orbiting around the planet 16 times per day – he was going to become an astronaut. From the very second he even knew it was an option, he wanted his feet to be off of this Earth. He wanted to feel what it felt like. He wanted to see what it looked like. He wanted to hear what it sounded like. 

He wanted all of it, and he never much minded the risk. Flight, after all, was his first love, and Bucky Egan will do just about anything for what he loves. A part of him always figured, if he had to die, he wanted it to be in the sky. If he had to die, it would be worth it, as long as flight was what claimed his life. Commit his soul to the stars, a supernova in the dark.

But then, of course, there was Gale. 

The night they met, two young boys standing awkwardly in a college dorm, Gale told Bucky that he didn’t intend to be an astronaut. He had Bucky wrapped around his finger from that very first smile, but he wanted to become an engineer for the Air Force. Maybe, if he got lucky, work his way into NASA’s space program. Someone back home to keep his feet on the ground may have done John Egan some good. But, in the end, it was him that looked at Gale and told him that all of that was bull. It was Bucky that pulled him along with strings tied to their hearts, convinced him to just give it all a shot – what’d he have to lose? And here he is, nearly two decades later, an everyday flyboy.

This life they’ve built, orbiting one another like a binary star system, is greater than any adventure Bucky ever could have imagined. The way he’s lived it, he figures he’s lucky he’s made it as far as he has. He’s lucky to be alive after that little stunt on the moon. He’s lucky to have the most amazing husband this side of the universe. He’s damn lucky for all of it. Maybe he’s a fool to ask for more.

But he’s not ready to keep his feet on the ground.

Not yet.

—

July 17, 2026 Houston, TX

Admittedly, this was maybe not Bucky’s brightest plan, taking a video call in the dimly lit Orion cabin, where he has to lay on his back, legs elevated, staring up at a brightly lit screen. He can feel a bit of a headache coming on, and he isn’t sure if the vague throbbing in his leg is real or just a figment of his haywire imagination. He might be losing feeling in his feet; he isn’t really sure. Is he setting himself up for failure? Maybe. This afternoon he needs to be in top form, or at least as close to it as he can get. But he’s committed now, and he’s too stubborn to move.

So here he is in the mock-up, like any other mission sim, tucked into his commander’s seat. Or, really, he supposes it’s Gale’s now. The Artemis 4 crew has been doing their fair share of sims in recent months, and Gale has been pulling longer and longer hours as they get closer to launch, as Bucky needs him at his side less and less.

Maybe that’s exactly why Bucky’s sitting here now. To feel close to his husband during a time when their careers, as usual, tend to pull them apart. Or maybe he’s sitting here because he needs the reminder, a silent dedication to who he is, what he’s meant to be doing, what he so badly needs to keep striving for.

Or maybe, he’s only sitting here because the seat of a cockpit is always where he’s felt the safest.

Safe isn’t the right word. 

In control, maybe. Most like himself. A cockpit is always where he’s best understood the world around him: sky above, Earth below, his heart strangled with a love for the unknown. The Orion capsule is another home to him. Things might go wrong – sometimes horribly, horribly wrong – but everything about it was constructed and tested with the singular goal of helping Bucky and his crew break boundaries, make history. Every single thing about it is so specific, so familiar, so carefully planned and crafted. John Egan knows this spacecraft better than he knows himself. In the chaos that is his life, it’s the capsule that carried him away from this planet that best keeps him grounded.

So he sits, laying on his back in the commander’s seat that once was his and is now Gale’s. He doesn’t really remember the process of getting here, but he remembers the intense need to be here, like he didn’t have a single other choice. When he first answered Gale’s video call, his husband stared at him for a long moment, then laughed and said something about “only John Egan has an emotional support spacecraft.” He didn’t say anything about how strange it is, considering Bucky almost died in this spacecraft. Maybe, in some weird, fucked up, convoluted way that he’ll have to talk to his therapist about later, that’s one reason he finds being in this tiny space so reassuring.

He’s not a psychologist. He’s hardly even an astronaut.

In any case, fully convinced that this was exactly where he needed to be to call his husband today – a day that has his nerves all shaken up like a can of soda – he duct taped his phone to the console above his head so that he can look at Gale without having to hold it up above his face the whole time. It fell and smacked him squarely on the nose once at the beginning of the call, but it’s been holding well enough since then. 

He doesn’t know how long they’ve been talking. Surely it’s been longer than they’d scheduled for, and someone’s gotta be looking for him by now, grabbing onto unassuming JSC employees and asking in a mild panic “Have you seen Major Egan?” Gale’s crew is no doubt waiting for him, too, perhaps just out of view of the camera, reminding him that they have to get started on some task or another. A part of Bucky feels guilty for holding Gale up for so long, but the rest of him needs this desperately.

This is the first time since Bucky splashed down in the Pacific last November that they’ve been apart for more than even a day. Scratch that, for more than 12 hours. Gale has stayed at his side, for better or worse, since the night he first laid eyes on Bucky again in the hospital. It feels like forever ago, and yet it feels like yesterday. Sometimes Bucky still wakes up convinced he’s dying, convinced that his hands don’t work, phantom pain burning through his leg, unable to speak. 

It was a long winter, and a long spring. Bucky has gaps admittedly, times when the brain fog whisked him away from reality, made it hard to stay in the moment, hard to figure out what was real. It all but disappeared with time, thankfully. He still has a moment here and there, especially when he first wakes up or if he’s stressed or nervous (not that he’ll admit to anyone but Gale that he’s even capable of being nervous), but they’re becoming less and less common.

Getting that leg to heal was a complete bitch. Turns out micro- and zero-gravity aren’t very kind to broken bones. Eventually the cast came off, and he progressed to a brace, walking with a cane, slowly, slowly working toward walking on his own again.

Gale was there the whole time. Holding him up, steadying him, cheering him on, taking the brunt of Bucky’s frustration and fear. No matter how many times Bucky lost his temper or wanted to give up or refused to get out of bed or go to PT or OT or his CT scans, Gale stayed. Gale didn’t give up on him. Gale loved him through it all.

It’s July now. Almost eight whole months since Bucky fell to this Earth, broken and barely breathing under a bright Pacific sky. It’s the dog days of summer, long and hot and busy as ever here at JSC. Gale has been gone for six whole days, training in Iceland with the Artemis 4 crew. Weirdly enough, the volcanic, rocky landscape of Iceland’s arctic desert is a perfect training ground for astronauts headed to the moon, and it has acted as such since the Apollo days. With Artemis in full swing, NASA has started sending the lunar crews out there again to conduct simulated missions that mimic what they’ll be faced with on the lunar surface.

Bucky misses those days, training and bonding with his crew – his best friends – as they bounded across the dark, eerie Icelandic rock in fake moon gear, out of their minds with excitement for what they were training to do. He’s spent much of this video call asking Gale about Iceland and their simulated missions, half wanting to relive it and half hoping maybe Gale would forget why Bucky wanted to call so bad in the first place. He can see on Gale’s face that he’s failing.

Sure enough, after indulging him for longer than Bucky honestly expected, Gale sighs and tilts his head, raising an eyebrow. “How do you feel?”

Bucky doesn’t quite know what Gale means when he asks this. The implications have changed so much over the years. 

In college, he’d ask Bucky How do you feel? when he woke up with a hangover after a night of drinking too much with their friends. Or that time he got terribly sick in the middle of midterm season and shoved through a Statics exam with a fever. When he pulled an all-nighter trying to finish a class project. When he passed Thermo by the skin of his teeth. From the first day of classes to the day they graduated.

How do you feel?

As young adults in the Air Force, or at NASA, he’d ask Bucky how he felt before going up for a mission or a training exercise. Or after survival training in the desert, wandering to the finish line dehydrated and sunburnt but alive and ahead of the rest of their astronaut class. He’d ask him after long training days or messy flights or after they’d been apart for days, weeks, months. He asked him when they both sat, shell-shocked, after losing a friend in the flames of a crash landing. How do you feel?

Before their wedding day, when Bucky was terrified of their future but knew without a doubt this was everything he ever wanted, Gale asked him, How do you feel?

During quarantine. Before the launch. On the pad. How do you feel?

Every day over CAPCOM or video call. Even when Bucky couldn’t hear him, couldn’t say anything back. How do you feel?

When Bucky came home, Gale would ask him that question several times a day. It was tough; there’s no use lying. There were times Bucky wanted to give up, couldn’t bring himself to leave the house or do much of anything. It was painful and it was confusing and it was messy, and sometimes all Bucky could do was stew in silence or, once or twice, tell Gale to fuck off. But every time his awareness drifted or he had to be moved with his bum leg, every time he woke up in pain or had to be left alone for any period of time, Gale, his voice gentle and concerned and so full of love, would ask him, How do you feel?

So what does he mean now?

Bucky doesn’t know how he feels. He should feel good. Excited. It’s about damn time this day came around. He’s John fucking Egan, not afraid of anything, born for the sky. He should feel as sure of himself as the day he climbed aboard the SLS.

So why doesn’t he?

He is excited. Don’t get him wrong. He’s been waiting for this since he woke up in a Houston hospital. But there’s a pit in his stomach and a weird, fluttery feeling in his chest and a weight settling over his shoulders that he can’t seem to shake.

He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel. He wants it to be the same as it was before. But it isn’t. It can’t be. 

Not anymore. 

“I’m fine.”

Gale frowns in that concerned, knowing way that he does. He looks so soft now, comfy in Bucky’s Yankees sweatshirt with his hair messy, no doubt fresh from debriefing after a ‘mission’ or about ready to get prepped for another. But Bucky squirms and looks away from his gaze; it sees right through him. It always has. 

“Try again,” Gale insists.

“I’m…” Bucky feels a weird phantom twinge in his leg. Blinks and it goes away. He rolls his eyes. At the question? At himself? Get it together. “I’m fuckin’ nervous,” he admits uncomfortably. “Of course I’m fuckin’ nervous, Buck. What if I get out there and…”

What if I get out there and I can’t do it anymore? What if I can’t handle it? Physically. Mentally. What if today just proves what we were all so worried about months ago: Bucky Egan is grounded. For good. 

“Fuck.” He can’t say any of it, can’t risk speaking the death of his career into existence. The melodramatic part of him thinks the bugler might as well start playing Taps right damn now if today doesn’t go his way. Fold up a flag and present it to Gale as the jets fly overhead.

He can only imagine the way Gale would frown and grit his teeth if Bucky said such a thing out loud.

His husband full well knows what Bucky means, though, and he’s quiet, thinking it over. Bucky can see half formed placations tumbling through his head like desperate dreams running on fumes. But eventually, he says, “it’s gonna be okay, John.” His voice is careful and easy, and he doesn’t even sound like he’s faking it. 

It makes Bucky’s heart clench.

“Gale,” he whispers, and he hates how vulnerable his voice sounds. It rings in his ears, echoing back and forth and back and forth as he roughly scrubs a hand over his eyes, squeezing them shut tight. 

He’s always felt most in control inside of a cockpit. He knows the way an aircraft moves better than he knows anything or anyone on this Earth, except maybe his husband. Flight makes him know who he is, gives him his metaphorical wings. And yet he’s also never felt more out of control than he has in a cockpit. 

If he goes up there, he has no idea what’ll happen. He has no idea what his body will do when it gets crushed into the seat by several times the force of gravity. He has no idea if the thing that used to lift him up will carry him again, or if it’ll spit him onto the ground in a pathetic heap of has-been.

So how is he supposed to feel right now?

Starbursts of pain color Bucky’s vision. Skull-splitting. All-consuming. It’s burning him alive from the inside out like a physical force trying to rip him apart. He thinks falling into a black hole would hurt less.

He feels sick. The G forces are too much.

He can’t think a coherent thought that isn’t something along the lines of ‘please make it stop.’ Somewhere, deep in his brain that won’t work, he hates himself for that. Knows he should be better.

And out of all of that – this crushing, crunching, nausea-inducing pain that has Curt yelling at him not to throw up in his suit – the words that pop up into his head like a cartoon thought bubble are “the Big Crunch.” 

It’s Gale’s favorite theory for how the universe might end. Because Gale is a space physics nerd that has a favorite theory for how the universe might end.

It’s like the opposite of the Big Bang – an exploding outward from an infinitesimal point, 0 to 73.3 kilometers per second per megaparsec in about a trillionth of a second flat. The Big Crunch would be an imploding inward, a collapsing into a single infinitesimal point at a similarly impossible to comprehend rate. Theoretically, this point could be anywhere in the universe.

John wonders if that would feel something like how he feels – crunching, disconnecting, reconnecting, blinding, unbearable. He sort of wishes it would just happen right now, with that point somewhere in this spacecraft. He’ll take the whole universe down with him. He doesn’t really mind, if it’ll make this stop.

“Gale?” He finds himself crying out the only word he can get past his lips. The only word that matters. The only word that can come remotely close to making any of this better. 

“Gale?”

Why won’t it work? Why won’t Gale save him?

He’s getting more desperate. Please. 

“Gale?”

“John? You with me?”

Bucky blinks. He looks back at his phone, sees Gale’s face, all worried and shit. It makes his heart sink, because Gale’s been looking at him like that a lot in recent months. Today is a big day, and Bucky knows Gale is worrying he won’t be able to handle it. He also knows that Gale feels guilty for worrying he can’t handle it. 

But Bucky’s worried, too.

“I wish you were here.” He says these words so quietly he isn’t sure Gale will hear them. He isn’t sure he wants Gale to hear them. He looks away from the phone as he says it, feeling too vulnerable and too raw on this day when he’s supposed to be Major John Egan: cool, cocky, composed. 

He can pretend for everyone else. Everyone besides Gale. He’ll tell them that he’s ready, even if he isn’t.

He won’t ever be ready until he does it anyway.

The lights are dim around him. In the glow of the console in front of his face, he strokes his fingers gently over the tactile buttons beside the screen. They feel so familiar; he thinks he could press one with his eyes closed and know exactly what it would do.

“I wish I was, too.” Gale’s voice comes back soft and real, bringing Bucky’s attention back to his phone screen. The way Gale’s face is so open and genuine – so unlike what the rest of the world gets to see of him, with a crooked half-smile half-frown accentuating the mix of emotions in his eyes, wide and searching Bucky’s for some answer he doesn’t have – makes Bucky want to pull him through the screen and hug him tight.

He wants Gale to hug him tight. He wants Gale to pull his feet back down to this planet and tell him he’s safe and protect him from everything that has hurt him so badly. He wants Gale to make sure the stars keep burning at night and the world keeps turning and the darkness doesn’t swallow them whole. He wants Gale to quiet the buzzing in his brain and the ringing in his ears. The little voice that’s telling him he can’t do it, can’t do any of it. He wants Gale to come home right damn now and make all of it go away.

But Gale won’t do that. Because he knows that, right this very moment, Bucky needs to climb the rest of the way up this mountain. He needs to stand at the top himself in order to understand that he can do it, he can make it. Gale can’t do anything but stand beside him.

“Do you think I’m ready?” Bucky asks. He says it with a mindless air, looking away as he traces his thumb over the bottom of the console, but there’s a jagged edge to his voice that gives him away. He doesn’t know if he wants Gale’s reply. There was a time when it didn’t matter what anyone else thought – even Buck. Bucky Egan would do what Bucky Egan wanted to do, whatever he convinced himself he was capable of doing.

Some things change. Sometimes forever, and sometimes only for a moment.

He makes tentative eye contact with his husband through the screen. Gale nods – a curt, somewhat hesitant little thing. “Maybe,” he says honestly. “You’re ready to at least try. But if it doesn’t go the way you want it to, you just keep workin’, and you’ll try again. You’re Bucky Egan. Nothing can keep your feet on the ground forever.”

Bucky is about to say something snarky and maybe self-deprecating back, but before he can, there’s a voice in the background of Gale’s side of the call. His eyes widen and he looks off screen, putting a hand up to whoever was trying to get his attention. He looks back at Bucky and sighs. “I gotta go, darlin’. You’ll be alright, hear me?”

Bucky forces a smile. “Yeah. Yeah, obviously.”

“I love you,” Gale says, shoving every bit of adoration he has into those words, and Bucky wants to bottle it up somehow, hold onto it for when he needs a reminder. 

“I love you, too,” he says. 

The corner of Gale’s mouth lifts into a shy smile. “Ad lunam, ad astra,” he says, and then he’s gone.

Alone again, Bucky reaches up to turn off his phone, and he lets his hand fall down to rest over his chest. He rubs his thumb over his wedding band, twists it around and around his finger. “Ad lunam, ad astra,” he whispers to himself. 

When the master alarm starts blaring through the cabin seconds later, red lights flashing in Bucky’s eyes, his heart rate shoots up as he instinctively starts thinking through every single thing that could possibly be wrong. His eyes scan the console in front of him, searching for system statuses that aren’t there, and he blinks in confusion before he shakes his head, remembering that he isn’t in a training exercise. Someone’s tracked him down. 

He turns off the alarm and lets silence fill the cabin again. 

“You know, when you said you were gonna find somewhere quiet to flirt with your husband, we thought you meant your office or a shady tree or somethin’.” 

Bucky turns his head awkwardly to see Rosie outside, his head ducked down to peek through the hatch at him.  

“It was quiet before you came and scared me half to death,” Bucky retorts. He reaches up and rips his duct taped phone off the console, picking the tape off and rolling it into a ball. 

“If that scares you, you’re in the wrong place,” Rosie quips. He freezes, just for a second, his eyes going that little bit wider, and Bucky sees the moment he realizes what he said. A harmless joke. A truth, if nothing else. Something that would’ve made Bucky throw a meaningless little insult right back at him a year ago. 

Everyone’s been walking on eggshells for a while now. No one would dare even insinuate that John Egan doesn’t belong here, especially not while he’s working so hard to claw his way back. 

But he takes Rosie’s words for what they are, rolls his eyes, and brushes a hand back through his hair. “If you ain’t a little scared you’re doin’ it wrong. Or you’re crazy.”

Rosie lets himself smile, shaking his head, and he crawls in through the hatch. He pulls himself into the seat beside Bucky, where Curt would usually sit. Bucky sticks the tape ball to his shoulder, and Rosie grabs it, shoves it into his pocket before Bucky can bug him with it any more. 

“Man, can you believe we spent weeks cramped up in this thing?” he muses, his eyes skimming over the industrial walls of the tapered conical cabin. He’s talking about the real Orion capsule, not to mention the hundreds of hours logged in this very simulator. 

Bucky glances around. This glorified minivan of a spacecraft is the stuff of his childhood dreams, like something straight from science fiction. “We’re astronauts, Rosie,” he points out, as if he doesn’t wonder every day how he managed to make it this far. “I can’t believe we left the planet at all.” Rosie scoffs, and they share a look, like neither of them are certain anything that’s happened in the last year was real. 

Bucky shakes his head, adding, “not like we ain’t used to it.”

“At least on the station we got more than one cramped space.”

Bucky doesn’t ask the question that surges through his brain at the mention of the station: Do you think I’ll ever go back? He isn’t ready for the answer. And he doesn’t want to hear ‘I don’t know’ or ‘Of course you will’ or ‘You’re John Egan, you can do anything.’

John Egan couldn’t sign his own name with a pen a few months ago.

Instead he looks over at the fake window on the side of the fake capsule, assessing the distance from it to him. It’s so close. “Felt like that window was a world away during the return trip.” He remembers being led over to it. The feeling of Beary Egan’s fur between his fingers. The throbbing in his head. The unbearable burning in his leg. The nausea in his stomach. Everything spinning around him.

But out the window, stars. So many stars. And he was going to get to them one way or another.

Rosie looks at the window, then back at Bucky. The crew physician remembers all of it, all too well. Part of him wishes he could forget the worst parts, but another part of him feels a need to be the keeper of those memories. He thanks the universe everyday for guiding all of them home. “Everything seems further away when your body doesn’t know if it’ll make it to tomorrow.”

They’re quiet for a long time, just two crew members in a capsule mock-up. It has snapshot memories flashing through Bucky’s mind, and he rubs his thumb over his wedding ring again to ground himself. He thinks about Rosie’s words. “I made it,” he whispers. 

“Yeah,” Rosie agrees. “Yes you fuckin’ did.”

It’s a truth that John has been trying to remind himself of every single day for months. He made it; he’s alive. 

But is that enough?

What do you do when the best experience of your life was also your worst? What do you do when the thing you love nearly killed you? What do you do when all is said and done, when there’s nothing left to do but forgive, even though you will never, ever be able to forget?

What do you do when the universe tries to strip away your identity, leaving nothing but a trembling shell, the pieces strewn about for you to pick up one by one?

You rebuild yourself, step by step. And what do you do when the edges don’t fit anymore, rough corners scrubbing at wounds that won’t heal, nothing but sheer grit and determination gluing you together?

Is it enough? Do the pieces fit well enough for you to be whole again? Will time sand away the jagged edges, sew together the messy seams? Pieces lost and pieces gained, and all you can do is search in the dark for who you were and who you thought you were and who you still can be. 

And you wonder, is it enough?

Bucky holds his hand up in front of his face. Out in zero G, there’s no up or down. You’re weightless, every part of you. Holding your hand up in the air takes no more effort than holding it out to the side or down or back or forward. On Earth, though, there’s good old gravity. 9.8 meters per second squared. 32 feet per second per second. A reliable force keeping your heels on the ground so you don’t just float away. With the way Orion’s seats are oriented, Bucky and Rosie lay on their backs, staring up at the tapered ceiling of the capsule and the screens set up in front of their faces.

Here on Earth, holding his hand up in front of his face takes effort. He’s not weightless down here, and as he experimentally pinches his fingers together, he watches the way they shake.

He bites his lip, takes a breath, closes his eyes. He doesn’t open them.

Gale once told him about the conversations he had with Dr. Huston – the fear that even if Bucky even made it home, he may never be the same. Now he wonders if that fear came true. Is he the same? Will he be the same? He doesn’t know.

He wonders if Gale does. He wonders what Gale sees now, when he looks at him.

He squeezes his eyes shut even tighter.

Ad lunam. Ad astra.

“You’re gonna be fine, John.” Rosie’s voice cuts through the ringing in Bucky’s ears, quieting it. “This is what you’re meant to do.”

Bucky swallows thickly, willing his voice not to come out a strangled mess. “What if… what if I’m not anymore? What if it doesn’t come back like it’s s’posed to?”

“You’ve been training.”

“What if I never...”

“Take a breath.”

Bucky does. There’s no room for panic. No room for doubt. Just him and the sky. 

“Open your eyes.”

When Bucky releases himself from the darkness, his hand is perfectly still in front of him. He straightens his fingers, bends them again, straightens them. They don’t shake.

“You’re ready, John.”

—

The sun is bright over Ellington Field late that afternoon, and Bucky pushes his aviators up the bridge of his nose. He tugs at the collar of his flight suit as he strides down the runway, adjusting it beneath the straps of his parachute pack, and he squares his shoulders, lifting his chin. He feels the hard pavement beneath his boots, hears the beat of his footsteps. The ground crew waits for him.

When he stops in front of the Northrop T-38 Talon, he squints against the light reflecting off its sleek white side, and he feels his breath catch in his throat at the sight of this beautifully engineered machine that will launch him into the blue. He curls his fingers into a fist, spreads them out wide, and slowly, steadily, he presses his hand to the nose of the jet standing in front of him, just waiting to come to life. The T-38 jet trainers are used by NASA for training exercises and keeping the astronaut corps’ flying skills up to par. He knows this aircraft as well as he knows Orion, but he hasn’t flown it since last July, a whole year ago now. 

“Hey there,” he whispers, letting his eyes roam over it – the fuselage, the engines, the wings, the tail, the wheels. A beautiful bird. It was designed long before Bucky was even born, but it doesn’t look it. “Long time no see.”

“Worried she won’t remember you?”

As Bucky’s eyes stay trained on the ground, studying the wheels, his hand still pressed to the nose, he feels someone else’s presence at his side. He looks up, pulling his hand away. Curt’s there, watching him with a teasing smile on his face. He’s wearing the same gear as Bucky: blue NASA flight suit, G-suit, parachute pack, a helmet tucked under his arm. His other hand grips the shoulder strap of his harness.

“Not one bit,” Bucky replies.

Curt chuckles and pulls Bucky into a tight one-armed hug, as if they haven’t seen each other in months even though Curt makes a point out of bugging him every day. “You ready?” he asks when he pulls away.

Bucky nods and grins in that wild, daring way, as if he hasn’t had a single doubt this whole time. As if he wasn’t just freaking out to Gale and Rosie over what he’s about to do. He brushes his hair back and gazes at the jet again. “Let’s see how well I remember her.”

After passing his sunglasses off to a ground crew member, he climbs the ladder leading to the Talon’s second seat, behind Curt’s. They each stow their procedure documents in the cockpit and hang their helmets on the rail before hopping back down for a walkaround inspection. This thing’s been checked at least twice over by ground crew already, but Curt and John don’t fly without giving their own seal of approval.

When Bucky climbs the ladder again and, at long last, settles into the tight cockpit of a real, flight-ready jet, adrenaline rises in his chest at the same time that a sense of belonging presses him into the seat. He sits back, and staring at the instrument panel just beyond his fingertips feels something like coming home. He can’t stop the grin that spreads over his face. The crew chief helps Curt and Bucky strap in and connect their G-suits, and then Bucky slides his helmet over his head so he can hook up to the oxygen supply and comms. He sighs deeply; for the duration of this test flight, this jet is a part of him, or he’s a part of it.

Ladders stowed and systems checks complete, Curt gives the signal for air, and the ground crewmen oblige, pumping life into the Talon’s engines. Once they’ve completed the last of their pre-flight checks, Bucky hears Curt’s voice buzzing in his ear. It crackles over the comms, a sound Bucky hasn’t heard coherently since he was bounding along the side of Shackleton crater.

“It feels damn good to fly with you again, Major.”

“Cut the crap, Biddick,” Bucky teases. “Without me around, you’re officially NASA’s best pilot.”

Curt scoffs at that, and Bucky imagines him rolling his eyes as he double checks the takeoff and landing data. “Should’ve left your ass on the moon… astrofag.”

Bucky rolls his eyes right back, but he can’t help but laugh. Whether he’ll admit it or not, the name is growing on him. He shrugs, reviewing the same numbers. “Only one way to get back there.”

Chick’s voice cuts in from the tower, and it makes Bucky feel something like relief to know Harding is here for this, rooting for him. “One step at a time, boys.”

As Curt starts taxiing, Bucky looks out over the side of the aircraft. The wings of the Talon and the still-open canopies shake as the tarmac rolls by beneath the wheels, bumping them along. He and Gale have taken their prop plane out a few times this month and last; Bucky even took over the controls for a while one time. But this, today, is his first time back in a supersonic jet trainer. He’s only flying second seat, leaving most of the piloting to Curt, but today is a major stepping stone toward feeling whole again: today he finds out if he can handle supersonic flight.

Since his neurologists cleared him for it a couple months ago, he’s been training for this day in earth-bound simulators. At first, the Gs were too much for him, leaving him feeling weak, pathetic, and discouraged as he passed out or started feeling sick at embarrassingly low G forces. But it’s been coming back to him in recent weeks. 

The Talon – capable of flying at Mach 1.3 and climbing 30,000 feet in just one minute – can easily pull 7 Gs. Bucky thinks he’s ready. He wants so badly to be ready. He wouldn’t be flying today if anyone thought he wasn’t ready.

They’re at the end of the runway, staring down the length of it as Curt pivots the Talon so its nose points straight ahead. When Chick clears them, they lower their canopies, and Bucky feels the cabin pressurize. He blinks in surprise as they lurch forward, and then they’re barrelling ahead, faster, faster, faster, until they lift up off the ground, ascending into the clear sky.

He breathes deeply as they climb, picking up speed as they shoot up into their airspace, approaching 16,000 feet. They coast there for a minute, making sure everything is still in order up at altitude. 

“Doin’ alright back there?” Curt asks as they both check their systems again.

“We’re go back here,” Bucky affirms. “Let’s fuckin’ do it.”

“Your wish is my command, Major,” Curt says. He lowers the nose of the jet, and they pick up speed as they drop again, getting up to about 500 knots, three-quarters of the speed of sound. Curt brings the stick back then, sharply pulling the Talon’s nose up, and Bucky watches the G-meter gradually kick up to 5 as they shoot upwards. The force presses him back into his seat, making it hard to breathe, and he clenches his muscles as he feels his G-suit get to work trying to keep the blood from draining away from his head. The needle creeps toward 6, goes a little over it. He grits his teeth hard, feeling his heart start to beat harder, faster as his vision starts to tunnel. His head feels funnier than he wishes it would, but he forces himself to focus, strains to breathe, determined to keep going. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, tensing his lower body as he and his suit fight to prevent G-LOC.

Chick’s voice crackles in Bucky’s ears. “You’re doin’ fine, son.”

Curt keeps pulling back until they’re up around 20,000 feet and the nose passes vertical; they’re now flying inverted. The nose of the Talon is like an arrow, going wherever you point it, and currently it’s looping them over backward at Curt’s command, with the ground through the canopy where the sky should be. The G-meter starts to chill out, dropping again as they lose speed. Bucky’s vision clears as the blood returns to his head, and he breathes in deeply.

Through the canopy, he catches a glimpse of two lonely, fluffy clouds in the distant sky, and below, little buildings and invisible people and dark, sparkling bodies of water spread out across the Earth. Stardust, he thinks, smiling just a little bit as he watches the world around him, trying to see it through Gale’s eyes. Bucky’s always found it beautiful, but more than anything, he’s always cared about the flight, the adrenaline, the excitement. Gale cares about the beauty, the wonder, the imperfect perfection.

“You still with me, Bucky?”

“Yeah,” Bucky assures Curt. “I’m here.”

Curt expertly flips them around and levels back out, upright once again and coasting along at a smooth 400 knot clip. “You ready?” he asks after giving Bucky some time to recover.

“I didn’t come all this way not to be.”

“I don’t need the sass,” Curt shoots back, but it’s light, like normal. “You have the controls.” Bucky’s pretty sure he hears the word ‘asshole’ muttered at the end of that sentence, and it makes him smile.

He shakes the stick in confirmation, and suddenly he has all the power of the Talon right there in his hands. His eyes flick down to where his fingers grip the stick, his heart skipping a beat, but his hand is perfectly still. “I have the aircraft,” he says, and he hopes Chick is still listening.

He sends them into a roll, feeling giddy as his head gets snapped to the side and his body seems to remember exactly what it’s supposed to do. Flying this thing is ingrained within him, like riding a bike – a bike that’s 46 feet long with a 25 foot wingspan, 3,000 pounds of thrust, a 55,000 foot altitude ceiling, and a top speed of 858 miles per hour. 

He asks the plane for a little more, a little more, pushing them higher, faster, forward. He hears Curt whoop loudly into the comms: “Come on baby! We’re fuckin’ back!” And Bucky hasn’t felt this alive since he was on the moon.

After a few minutes of unfiltered glee at the helm of his long-lost ship, feeling pieces of his soul sink back into him, he banks them around and hands the controls back over to Curt for the grand finale, their final test of the day. At about 32,000 feet, they enter a shallow dive, using it to increase their speed again. Bucky feels himself being pressed back, but with a more comfortable amount of force this time as the sky blurs by. He watches the airspeed indicator. Mach 0.92… 0.96… 0.98… 0.99. The indicator jumps, out of sync, as the bow shock passes.

Bucky nearly gasps as they hit Mach 1… 1.02… 1.06… 1.11. 

A strange feeling of calm descends on him. They’re flying faster than the speed of sound; they’re flying faster than anything else on Earth. There’s a certain beauty to it that Bucky’s missed in the last eight months, and he blinks away stubborn tears as the world starts to make sense again. He looks out the window, sees nothing but blue skies, and he lets oxygen fill his lungs as he grins beneath his mask. He laughs, and he hears Curt laugh with him.

—

Back on the ground, once the canopies are up and Curt’s parked them squarely in the Talon’s hangar, the crew chief secures the ladders to the side of the aircraft, giving the pilots their exit. He asks Bucky if he feels alright, and Bucky nods once his helmet is off, leaving dark, sweaty hair sticking up in all directions. “Never better,” he says.

In his head is a steady mantra: I am an astronaut. I am an Air Force officer. I am a pilot.

He just proved it to himself, even if he still has more work to do. He is a pilot. He is all of those things. Not was… he is. 

He climbs down slowly, gripping tight to the sides of the ladder in a way that has him second guessing how much brain power he needs to dedicate to his grip strength. Just a few months ago, his fingers wouldn’t listen well enough to do even this. But he studies his hands for just a split second, one foot on the rungs of the ladder and the other hanging mid-air, and he realizes that his fingers are working just fine right now. His legs feel a little weak as he steps down, down, down, and he holds his breath as he lowers himself the last big step to solid ground. His head goes just a little fuzzy, and for a nerve-wracking half second, he worries his knee might give out and send him crashing to the pavement, but his toes find contact, and he lets himself hop down. His head clears. He takes another deep breath.

His heart is beating fast; he still feels the adrenaline thrumming in his chest, and it makes him feel so goddamn alive. The world around him feels so unreal, the feeling of Curt clapping him on the shoulder so far away that it makes Bucky stumble to the side. He laughs and shakes his head before turning to press his hand to the jet one more time. 

“Next stop, flyin’ her yourself,” Curt says.

For the first time in months, Bucky actually believes it might happen. It’s not even a half-truth said to the media, a manifesto spoken to shove him through PT, a dream to get him out of bed in the morning. It’s right here in front of him, just inches away, and he’s so close. 

He doesn’t say any of it out loud, but he knows Curt can see it, too. They all can see it. Someday soon, John Egan won’t be grounded anymore.

He tucks his helmet under his arm and takes his aviators from the crew chief with a nod of thanks before putting them on. With a glance over at his best co-pilot as they walk away from the aircraft, out of the hangar, he ruffles Curt’s sweaty hair. “What the fuck?” Curt says, but he’s looking somewhere out ahead of them when he says it.

Bucky squints into the early evening summer sun at a small silhouette running fast toward them. After a second of confusion, he laughs and sinks down to his knees just in time for a wriggly husky to crash into his chest. “Pep!” A second one runs up to his side, licking at his ear before going after Curt. “And Meatball,” Bucky laughs. Pepper shoves her nose into his face, making him lean his head back, pushing her away even as he curls his fingers into her thick coat. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Flyin’ looks good on you major,” a voice calls out. Bucky’s heart skips a beat, and his head shoots up, his hands freezing in the middle of scratching Pepper’s ears. Meatball trots away, toward the group of people approaching them. 

There’s Benny and Marge – here for support and for media updates respectively – as Bucky expected. Then there’s Chick, fresh from the tower and looking something like a proud father, or maybe just a relieved boss.

And then there’s Gale.

Bucky’s husband – the same one that Bucky was supposedly video calling in Iceland just hours ago – is now also in a NASA flight suit with his hair gelled back. He’s walking across the tarmac to him, illuminated by the sun. 

“Holy shit, man!” Benny exclaims, giving Bucky a firm, excited side hug before slapping Curt on the shoulder. “Bucky Egan is back.”

“That’s right, you can’t get rid of me,” Bucky jokes as Marge comes forward to hug him. He knows she’ll want some pictures of him and Curt by the Talon in a minute, but for now she just whispers in his ear that she’s proud of him, and she squeezes him tight.

Chick pulls him into a rare hug, patting him on the back. “You did damn good,” he says. “Damn good.”

And then there’s Gale. He stands in front of Bucky, looking a little sheepish but tall and proud and beautiful. He raises an eyebrow, and Bucky can’t do anything but stare at him for a long moment. He stares, and stares some more, before finally he blinks and surges forward. Gale grunts at the force of Bucky’s body hitting his, but he firmly plants his feet and wraps his arms around him. “Hello to you, too.”

“Hey, angel,” Bucky whispers. He presses his nose into Gale’s hair, inhales the scent of his shampoo and product. He smells like Houston, like the gulf, like waking up to sunlight shining through the windows, like all the things Bucky loves. He smells like home. “All that about what you were doin’ in Iceland today was bullshit, huh?” 

Gale shrugs. “Surprise?”

Bucky grips the fabric of Gale’s flight suit, twisting it in his fingers. “Were you… did you see?”

Gale nods. “I saw all of it.”

Bucky bites back a grin, hiding it against the side of Gale’s head. He hears Marge take their picture. It’ll be framed and on his desk within the week.

—

By the time the sun’s gone down, the Talon tucked away in its hangar and the ground crew gone for the day, Bucky is back at Ellington Field, sitting on the hard pavement of the runway. There’s the lightest breeze drifting around him, carried in off the bay to relieve Houston from the oppressive heat of the daylight. Major Egan is still in his flight suit, adorned with patches – his name, John Egan, written in neat script beneath a set of wings; the NASA logo; the U.S. flag; his ISS mission patch; and finally, Artemis III.

There’s a crescent moon peeking out of the darkness, set against a backdrop of dark blue-black sky pockmarked with the stars that have guided Bucky his entire life. He stares up at them, the moon and the stars, his mind jumping from one thing to the next. Running through his flight today, everything good and bad about it; thinking through how much further he still has to go until his body is 100% ready to fly alone again; wondering if Gale is looking for him, if he knows Bucky well enough to know where to find him. He’s remembering walking on that moon – every day he works to reconcile it all in his brain, what went wrong and what went right. He’s thinking about what it will be like when Gale goes up there in just a short four or so months.

He can hear footsteps walking over the pavement, and he breathes out in a huff. His husband knows him like the back of his own hand after all.

He spares a glance over as Gale settles on the ground beside him, pulling his knees to his chest in a way that Bucky thinks can’t possibly be comfortable anymore at their age. They sit, close enough that their arms brush, and they look up at the sky that has laid the path for their entire existence.

“Everyone’s headin’ to the Hundred Proof,” Gale says. “Thought you’d wanna drink to being back in the cockpit.”

Bucky hums. “Guess that’s somethin’ I oughta do.” Since he was released from the hospital last December, the Hundred Proof has become a place of celebration and camaraderie again, rather than one of collective grief and worry. His Artemis portrait went up on the walls of the bar just before the new year, along with Curt’s, Rosie’s, and Alex’s. Soon enough, Gale’s ISS portrait will be switched out for his Artemis 4 one, too. Buck and Bucky; one is never far behind the other. 

Bucky crosses his legs and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, still looking up as if he can see the entire universe if he only squints hard enough. “We’ve been through a lot together, haven’t we?”

“Have we?”

Bucky looks over at Gale again, scoffing in disbelief, but he finds Gale hiding a smirk as he presses his cheek to his knee, watching Bucky. His hair is messy again from running his hand through it, the gel never holding for long, and Bucky rolls his eyes, reaching a hand out to ruffle it some more. 

“It’s worth it,” he says matter of factly, letting his eyes drift back to the stars.

Gale scoots closer and lets his head fall against Bucky’s shoulder. “It’s our life,” he agrees. He doesn’t need to emphasize the our; it’s as if there was never any doubt in this universe that his life would be John’s and John’s would be his.

“Sometimes I can’t really believe I made it here.”

“You were never gonna take no for an answer.” Gale doesn’t know exactly which part of Bucky’s life they’re talking about. He wasn’t going to settle for less than the astronaut corps. And he wasn’t going to settle for less than Gale either. 

“I said sometimes,” Bucky mutters, but there comes a point, no matter how badly you’ve always wanted something, where it doesn’t feel real anyways. He doesn’t quite know what he did right to make it to this very spot, even if he can trace his exact path, every single step and crossroads and difficult decision. Sometimes, all he feels is fucking lucky.

Gale scoffs and turns his head, pressing his nose against Bucky’s neck, above the collar of his flight suit. He kisses the delicate skin there. “I never had a doubt,” he whispers. “I’m proud of you.”

Bucky leans back, pulling Gale with him until they’re both laying on the hard ground. It’s uncomfortable as hell, but Gale curls against Bucky’s body anyway, shifting so his head lays right over his heart. Bucky’s fingers curl into his hair. They don’t shake. They don’t even hesitate.

“It’s a damn good life,” Bucky breathes out, the words floating up to the heavens and wrapping around them both. He means it with everything he has. 

Gale hums in agreement. With his ear pressed to Bucky’s chest, he can hear his heartbeat, steady and strong. It’s a sound that he took for granted before, but he never, ever gets tired of it now. He squeezes his eyes shut and silently counts along. One. Two. Three. Four.

“You’ll come home, right?” Bucky asks. Few people in this world would be able to distinguish the slight tremble to his voice, the way it jumps almost imperceptibly, nerves twining through it. But Gale hears it loud and clear. With his cheek pressed to Bucky’s chest, he feels the rise and fall start to slow, feels the way Bucky is nearly holding his breath.

Gale closes his eyes, bites at his lower lip. He knows that Bucky knows better than to ask that question. Both of them know that their line of work has never, not once, come with guarantees. They know better than anyone that promises like that are as good as empty. And yet, without promises, what is there to keep them moving forward?

So Gale buries his face in Bucky’s chest and says the only thing he can say. “When have you ever known me not to come home?”

Bucky scoffs quietly at that, but Gale knows that’s all he wanted to hear. They both know that, technically, the odds of him making it home are high; the opposite outcome, statistically, has little to no standing. Bucky takes Gale’s hand, and he mindlessly fiddles with Gale’s fingers in a way that feels normal and domestic, like they’re just any other married couple in this funny little world. Like they’re just them – awkward teenagers and reckless young adults and newlyweds all at once.

Gale could count the days until he launches out of this planet’s orbit. The hours. The minutes. He could mentally tally them as they tick by, pulling them closer and closer to the next adventure, the next mission, the next dream. The clock is running.

But, despite it looming over them, with all of the excitement and adrenaline and worry that it entails, at this exact moment, beneath a sky full of stars, it feels far away. He could count down the seconds. He could feel the anticipation of it winding through his body with every beat of his heart. 

But instead, he focuses on Bucky. He counts his husband’s heartbeats, the purest sign that they are both alive, that they are both exactly where they need to be. One. Two. Three. Four.

“Ad lunam, ad astra,” Bucky whispers into the night.

Gale hides a smile against the fabric of Bucky’s flight suit. It smells like flight – fuel and sweat. He focuses on that, on the rise and fall of Bucky’s chest, on the feeling of warmth between them, the sticky summer air drifting through their hair. 

“To the moon, to the stars,” he repeats back. And with a soft smile, he lets himself breathe.

[thisisyourdriverspeaking]

Well, this took me a lot of online digging & a lot of patience but this is the top songs in the charts/most popular songs for each of the winners of the Indy 500. I hope you guys enjoy the effort 😂

30th May 1911 - Ray Harroun - Arthur Collins - Steamboat Bill

30th May 1912 - Joe Dawson - Enrico Caruso - Dreams Of Long Ago

30th May 1913 - Jules Goux - Harry Lauder - It's Nicer To Be In Bed

30th May 1914 - Rene Thomas - Heidelberg Quintet - By The Beautiful Sea

31st May 1915 - Ralph DePalma - Alma Gluck - Carry Me Back To Old Viginity

30th May 1916 - Dario Resta - John McCormack - The Sunshine Of Your Smile

31st May 1919 - Howdy Wilcox - Henry Burr & Albert Campbell - i'm Forever Blowing Bubbles

31st May 1920 - Gaston Chevrolet - Al Jolson - Swanee

30th May 1921 - Tommy Milton - Marion Harris - Look For The Silver Lining

30th May 1922 - Jimmy Murphy - Al Jolson - Angel Child

30th May 1923 - Tommy Milton - Carl Fenton - Love Sends A Little Gift Of Roses

30th May 1924 - Lora L Corum & Joe Boyer - Al Jolson - California Here I Come

30th May 1925 - Pete DePaolo - Ted Lewis - O! Katharina

31st May 1926 - Frank Lockhart - Gene Austin - Five Foot Two, Eyes Of Blue

30th May 1927 - George Soulders - Ben Bernie - Ain't She Sweet?

30th May 1928 - Louis Meyer - Gene Austin - Ramona

30th May 1929 - Ray Keech - Rudy Vallee - Honey

30th May 1930 - Billy Arnold - Rudy Vallee - Stein Song (University Of Maine)

30th May 1931 - Louis Schneider - Bing Crosby - Out Of Nowhere

30th May 1932 - Fred Frame - Louis Armstrong - All Of Me

30th May 1933 - Louis Meyer - Leo Reisman ft Harold Arlen - Stormy Weather

30th May 1934 - Bill Cummings - Duke Ellington - Cocktails For Two

30th May 1935 - Kelly Petillo - Guy Lombardo - What's The Reason (I'm Not Pleasin' You)

30th May 1936 - Louis Meyer - Benny Goodman - The Glory Of Love

31st May 1937 - Wilbur Shaw - Teddy Wilson ft Billie Holiday - Carelessly

30th May 1938 - Floyd Roberts - Shep Fields - Cathedral In The Pines

30th May 1939 - Wilbur Shaw - Benny Goodman - And The Angels Sing

30th May 1940 - Wilbur Shaw - Bing Crosby - If I Had My Way

30th May 1941 - Floyd David & Mauri Rose - Deanna Durbin - Waltzing In The Clouds

30th May 1946 - George Robson - Denny Dennis & The Skyrockets - Mary Lou

30th May 1947 - Mauri Rose - Bing Crosby - Among My Souvenirs

31st May 1948 - Mauri Rose - Bing Crosby - Galway Bay

30th May 1949 - Bill Holland - Burl Ives - Lavender Blue

30th May 1950 - Johnnie Parsons - Billy Eckstine - My Foolish Heart

30th May 1951 - Lee Wallard - Les Paul & Mary Ford - Mockin' Bird Hill

30th May 1952 - Troy Ruttman - Jo Stafford - A-Round The Corner

30th May 1953 - Bill Vukovich - Frankie Laine - I Believe

31st May 1954 - Bill Vukovich - Doris Day - Secret Love

30th May 1955 - Bob Sweikert - Eddie Calvert - Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White

30th May 1956 - Pat Flaherty - Ronnie Hilton - No Other Love

30th May 1957 - Sam Hanks - Andy Williams - Butterfly

30th May 1958 - Jimmy Bryan - Connie Francis - Who's Sorry Now

30th May 1959 - Rodger Ward - Elvis Presley - A Fool Such As I

30th May 1960 - Jim Rathmann - The Everly Brothers - Cathy's Clown

30th May 1961 - AJ Foyt - Temperance Seven - You're Driving Me Crazy

30th May 1962 - Rodger Ward - Elvis Presley - Good Luck Charm

30th May 1963 - Parnelli Jones - The Beatles - From Me To You

30th May 1964 - AJ Foyt - Cilla Black - You're My World

31st May 1965 - Jim Clark - Sandie Shaw - Long Live Love

30th May 1966 - Graham Hill - The Rolling Stones - Paint It Black

31st May 1967 - AJ Foyt - The Tremeloes - Silence Is Golden

30th May 1968 - Bobby Unser - Union Gap - Young Girl

30th May 1969 - Mario Andretti - The Beatles with Billy Preston - Get Back

30th May 1970 - Al Unser - England World Cup Squad - Back Home

29th May 1971 - Al Unser - Dawn - Knock Three Times

27th May 1972 - Mark Donohue - T.Rex - Metal Guru

30th May 1973 - Gordon Johncock - Wizzard - See My Baby Jive

26th May 1974 - Johnny Rutherford - Rubettes - Sugar Baby Love

25th May 1975 - Bobby Unser - Tammy Wynette - Stand By Your Man

30th May 1976 - Johnny Rutherford - J.J Barrie - No Charge

29th May 1977 - A.J Foyt - Rod Stewart - I Don't Want To Talk About It

28th May 1978 - Al Unser - Boney M - Rivers Of Babylon

27th May 1979 - Rick Mears - Blondie - Sunday Girl

25th May 1980 - Johnny Rutherford - Hot Chocolate - No Doubt About It

24th May 1981 - Bobby Unser - Adam & The Ants - Stand & Deliver

30th May 1982 - Gordon Johncock - Madness - House of Fun

29th May 1983 - Tom Sneva - The Police - Every Breath You Take

27th May 1984 - Rick Mears - Wham! - Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go

26th May 1985 - Danny Sullivan - Paul Hardcastle - 19

31st May 1986 - Bobby Rahal - Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer

24th May 1987 - Al Unser - Starship - Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now

29th May 1988 - Rick Mears - Wet Wet Wet - With A Little Help From My Friends

28th May 1989 - Emerson Fittipaldi - Gerry Marsden, Paul McCartney, Holly Johnson & The Christians - Ferry Cross The Mersey

27th May 1990 - Arie Luyendyk - Adamski - Killer

26th May 1991 - Rick Mears - Cher - The Shoop Shoop Song

24th May 1992 - Al Unser JR - KWS - Please Don't Go

30th May 1993 - Emerson Fittipaldi - Ace Of Base - All That She Wants

29th May 1994 - Al Unser JR - Wet Wet Wet - Love Is All Around

28th May 1995 - Jacques Villeneuve - Robson & Jerome - Unchained Melody

26th May 1996 - Buddy Lazier - Buddiel, Skinner & Lightning Seed - Three Lions

27th May 1997 - Arie Luyendyk - Eternal ft Bebe Winans - I Wanna Be The Only One

24th May 1998 - Eddie Cheever - Tamperer ft Maya - Feel It

30th May 1999 - Kenny Brack - Shanks & Bigfoot - Sweet Like Chocolate

28th May 2000 - Juan Pablo Montoya - Sonique - It Feels So Good

27th May 2001 - Helio Castroneves - DJ Pied Piper - Do You Really Like It?

26th May 2002 - Helio Castroneves - Eminem - Without Me

25th May 2003 - Gil De Ferran - Justin Timberlake - Rock Your Body

30th May 2004 - Buddy Rice - Frankee - F.U.R.B (F U Right Back)

29th May 2005 - Dan Wheldon - Akon - Lonely

28th May 2006 - Sam Hornish JR - Gnarls Barkley - Crazy

27th May 2007 - Dario Franchitti - Rihanna ft Jay-Z - Umbrella

25th May 2008 - Scott Dixon - Rihanna - Take A Bow

24th May 2009 - Helio Castroneves - Dizzee Rascal & Van Helden - Bonkers

30th May 2010 - Dario Franchitti - Dizzee Rascal - Dirtee Disco

29th May 2011 - Dan Wheldon - Pitbull ft Ne-Yo, Afrojack & Nayer - Give Me Everything

27th May 2012 - Dario Franchitti - Fun ft Janelle Monae - We Are Young

26th May 2013 - Tony Kanaan - Naughty Boy ft Sam Smith - La La La

25th May 2014 - Ryan Hunter-Reay - Sam Smith - Stay With Me

24th May 2015 - Juan Pablo Montoya - OMI - Cheerleader (Felix Jaehn Remix)

29th May 2016 - Alexander Rossi - Drake ft Wizkid & Kyla - One Dance

28th May 2017 - Takuma Sato - Luis Fonsi, Daddy Yankee & Justin Bieber - Despacito

27th May 2018 - Will Power - Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa - One Kiss

26th May 2019 - Simon Pagenaud - Ed Sheeran & Justin Bieber - I Don't Care

23rd August 2020 - Takuma Sato - Joel Corry ft MNEK - Head & Heart

30th May 2021 - Helio Castroneves - Olivia Rodrigo - Good 4 U

29th May 2022 - Marcus Ericsson - Harry Styles - As It Was

28th May 2023 - Josef Newgarden - Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding - Miracle

26th May 2024 - Josef Newgarden - Sabrina Carpenter - Espresso

And yes, this wouldn't be a post from me if I didn't create a playlist 😂

[library-child]

How Armstrong Feint became Hangfire

Re-reading ATWQ fueled my brainrot concerning the radicalization of Armstrong Feint. How did a loving father become a terrorist hell-bent on slaughtering children? So I did some research on common risk factors that can make people susceptible to terrorism and checked how they apply to Armstrong. Needless to say, this only made my brainrot worse. Anyway, here are the results.

Social isolation ☑️

The first risk factor is the lack of reliable social connections. You may be all alone or unable to open up emotionally to the people close to you. You might even have trouble interacting with other people in the first place. This can result in feeling alienated. There also is no one to support you when you are hurting or interfere when you start radicalizing.

While having only Ellington's limited and likely romanticized perspective on her life with her father, there are some hints Armstrong may have been lonely. He was a single parent who spent most of his time working alone in the wild. Ellington does say she contacted people who knew him, but she never mentions anyone but her father when talking about her past. This could imply they led a very isolated life. Also, Armstrong's enthusiasm about nature could have something to do with his having trouble getting along with other people. At least, he seemed to prefer plants and animals over people.

Hardship ✅

Intense suffering makes you vulnerable in many ways. If you experience hardship and don't get support, you might become more susceptible to radical views/groups. That's what's so seductive about things like cults or terror organizations, after all: They promise you a community, a sense of belonging, and an easy solution for your problems.

Again, we don't know enough about Armstrong's past. He certainly must have been stressed out by being a single parent and the only bread-earner of the family. And he must have gotten into this position somehow. We never learn why Ellington's mother has never been in the picture. Furthermore, as a nature-loving person, he must have felt extreme anguish at the destruction of his home region caused by the flood. Not to mention the destruction of his hometown and the life he had built for himself.

There is also one intriguing aspect that doesn't get explored in the books, so it's purely speculative: the war that made Colonel Colophon a hero. We don't know when exactly this war happened or how involved the Snicket country was, but it does open the possibility that Armstrong's generation had to fight as soldiers.

Lack of perspective ❓

You're in a bad place and don't see a way out. You don't see the point anymore and don't know how you want to go on. Another allure of terrorism is providing you with a 'meaningful life'.

This one is tricky. Armstrong did have a purpose in the form of a young daughter whom he undoubtedly loved with all his heart. We don't know if or how he intended to reunite with her had he succeeded. We can only speculate if he fell into resignation. Perhaps he was shaken by the futility of his life's work after one tycoon's decision had undone it. Perhaps he realized Ellington was growing up and wouldn't need him in a few years.

Powerlessness and injustice ✅

This is relevant both on a social and individual level. When you live under corruption, tyranny, etc without a way to defend yourself, you're more likely to resort to terrorism. It's also relevant if you personally feel you're being treated unfairly and there's nothing you can do about it.

The social injustice is blatantly clear: Ink Inc. was allowed to destroy Killdeer Fields for profit, and its inhabitants could not prevent it. The flooding must have started several years before the beginning of ATWQ. Who knows what Armstrong and the rest of the town did to fight it, all in vain? We also see how corrupt and incompetent the institutions, such as the police, the official fire department, the press, and the legal system, are in the Snicketverse. This might have been a reason the V.F.D. became successful in the first place: They fixed the failed state.

Armstrong's individual perception is more obscure. He certainly realized he was a victim and probably became increasingly obsessed over this. He may have started out being rightfully outraged by the injustice done to him by Stain'd-by-the-Sea and shaken by his own helplessness. But eventually, he got stuck in this state of mind until he forgot he still had agency and responsibilities.

Over-simplified worldview ✅

You tend to view the world in clear black-and-white categories: You are always the hero, and the others are the villains. You're always the victim, the others the oppressors. You're never responsible for your actions; it's everyone else's fault. You lose touch with reality as you sink deeper into a super simple, convenient narrative of how the world works, and spreading terror and violence is the only right to do.

Hangfire displays this attitude during his conversation with Lemony in book 4. He only points out Stain'd-by-the-Sea's crimes without taking ownership of his own. He equates humanity to beasts trying to survive. There are no morals; every act of violence is just self-preservation. It's kill or be killed, meaning kill the children of Stain'd before they can repeat their parents' mistakes.

Conclusion

What can I say? These books have messed up my brain.

[lboogie1906]

Charles Henry Alston (November 28, 1907 – April 27, 1977) was a painter, sculptor, illustrator, muralist, and teacher who lived and worked in Harlem. He was active in the Harlem Renaissance; he was the first African American supervisor for the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. He designed and painted murals at the Harlem Hospital and the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Building. His bust of Martin Luther King Jr. became the first image of an African American displayed at the White House.

He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School, where he was nominated for academic excellence and was the art editor of the school’s magazine, The Magpie. He was a member of the Arista, National Honor Society and studied drawing and anatomy at the Saturday school of the National Academy of Art. In high school, he was given his first oil paints and learned about his aunt Bessye Bearden’s art salons, which stars like Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes attended. He attended Columbia University, turning down a scholarship to the Yale School of Fine Arts.

He entered the pre-architectural program but lost interest after realizing what difficulties many African American architects had in the field. After taking classes in pre-med, he decided that math, physics, and chemistry “was not just my bag”, and he entered the fine arts program. During his time at Columbia, he joined Alpha Phi Alpha, worked on the university’s Columbia Daily Spectator, and drew cartoons for the school’s magazine Jester. He explored Harlem restaurants and clubs, where his love for jazz and Black music would be fostered. He received a fellowship to study at Teachers College, where he obtained his MA. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #alphaphialpha

[gizmotemusic]

More black runners are being disqualified from competition because of their naturally high testosterone levels.

There are articles elsewhere about how sports rulings facilitate racism (even quoting the Court of Arbitration for Sport saying "discrimination is necessary") and how natural testosterone levels don't even determine one's athletic performance. There are even articles about applying the faulty logic required to disqualify these black sprinters to other athletes to other sports: if we think a "genetic advantage" is worth disqualifying these sprinters over, why not disqualify Michael Phelps from swimming because of his genetic advantages?

I think that last example really illustrates the absurdity of the argument, but I want to take it further. What if we refused to acknowledge other exceptional people because of their genetic advantages? Let's extend that line of thinking:

Robert Pershing Wadlow, with a height of 8 ft 11 in, should be disqualified from having the title of tallest person ever. His height was due to a genetic advantage: an excess of a growth hormone. The so-called "shortest person ever" also had a genetic advantage (dwarfism), so his claim's illegitimate too.

Duke Ellington, Billy Joel, Charli XCX and others should be disqualified from the awards and recognitions they've earned: their synesthesia is just an unfair advantage.

Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf and others were cheats. Their various mental illnesses influenced their writing; it's not fair to consider them to be on a level playing field with their contemporaries.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Maybe we should disqualify albinos from fashion and acting awards; after all, their appeal is boosted by a genetic factor other people don't have access to. Can Tenzing Norgay really be fairly considered as one of the first people to ascend Mount Everest, since Sherpas are known to have a genetic proclivity for surviving high-altitude environments? Let's disqualify all women from ballet awards, since that profession is largely designed for them, giving them an advantage over men. What if we disqualified Martin Luther King Jr from eligibility for the Nobel Peace Prize, since his blackness uniquely positioned him to fight for civil rights? You know what, just to be safe, we should disqualify anyone with a genetic condition that affects their chosen profession in any way.

What we're left with is only the "standard" people: able-bodied cis white men.

You can see how this line of thinking very quickly becomes racist, transphobic, sexist, ableist, and all other sorts of horrendous.

Let's celebrate people for their exceptional attributes instead of punishing them in the name of a level playing field.

[kickmag]

Throwback: Digital Underground-The Humpty Dance

"The Humpty Dance" is the second single from Digital Underground's first album, Sex Packets. Shock G produced the thick whirling beat using three samples of songs by Sly and The Family Stone and Parliament plus a kick drum, snares, bass, guitar, and hi-hats. George Clinton's Sirnosedevoidofunk alter ego inspired Shock G's Humpty Hump character. Sir Nose had a big nose and was in distress about being forced to dance. Humpty's backstory was that Edward Ellington Humphrey III was the lead singer of the group Smooth Eddie and the Humpers who became a rapper after somehow burning his nose in an accident with a deep fryer, hence the fake nose. Humpty Hump is a ladies' man, and the whole song is about his encounters with various women, most famously one he met in a Burger King restroom. Shock G not only wrote, produced and performed the song, but he also drew the artwork for all of their releases. Digital Underground was another bridge between funk and hip-hop that was made easier thanks to George Clinton's early understanding and acceptance of sampling and hip-hop. Tupac Shakur made one of his earliest public appearances in the background of the hilarious video. 

"The Humpty Dance" updated those grooves for Gen X, who had a seamless understanding of Digital Underground because they had grown up listening to Clinton on the radio. P-Funk's profound influence on West Coast hip-hop was being shown in contrast to New York rap, which relied more on soul samples. The single charted well, making No. 1 on the Rap Singles chart, Top Ten on the R&B chart, and Top 40 on the pop chart, but despite its heavy popularity and influence it was not nominated for any awards. Today, "The Humpty Dance" is celebrated as one of the most creative and eminent songs in hip-hop and of the era. Artists have sampled "The Humpty Dance" over 100 times in other songs and Shock G's left-field approach to hip-hop is a precursor to California rap weirdo Tyler, The Creator.  Shock G's The Piano Man album of solo piano improvisations was posthumously released on TNT Recordings after his 2021 passing. 

[jpbjazz]

LÉGENDES DU JAZZ

SERGE CHALOFF, LA DESCENTE AUX ENFERTS D’UN SAXOPHONISTE VIRTUOSE

‘’When Serge was cleaned up, you know, straight, he could be a delight, really to be around, a lot of fun. He knew how to handle himself. He had that gift. He could get pretty raunchy when he was strung out, but he could also be charming.''

- Zoot Sims

Né le 24 novembre 1923 à Boston, au Massachusetts, Serge Chaloff était issu d’une famille musicale. Son père Julius Chaloff était compositeur et avait joué du piano avec le Boston Symphony Orchestra. Sa mère était  la professeure de piano émérite Margaret Chaloff. Mieux connue sous le surnom de ‘’Madame Chaloff’’, Margaret, qui était professeure au New England Conservatory, avait notamment enseigné à des grands noms comme Leonard Bernstein, George Shearing, Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, Steve Kuhn, Chick Corea et Dick Twardzik.

Chaloff, qui avait d’abord appris le piano à partir de l’âge de six ans, avait également suivi des cours de clarinette avec Manuel Valerio du Boston Symphony Orchestra. À l’âge de douze ans, après avoir entendu Harry Carney jouer avec l’orchestre de Duke Ellington, Chaloff avait dédidé d’apprendre à jouer du saxophone baryton en autodidacte. Comme Chaloff l’avait expliqué plus tard lors d’une entrevue accordée au critique Leonard Feather: ‘’Who could teach me? I couldn't chase [Harry] Carney around the country.''

Même s’il avait été influencé par Carney et par Jack Washington, le saxophoniste baryton de l’orchestre Count Basie, Chaloff n’avait pas tenté de les imiter. Comme l’avait déclaré son frère Richard Chaloff, Serge ‘’could play {baritone} like a tenor sax. The only time you knew it was a baritone was when he took it down low. He played it high.… He had finger dexterity, I used to watch him, you couldn't believe the speed he played. He was precise. He was a perfectionist. He would be up in his bedroom as a teenager. He would be up by the hour to one, two, three in the morning and I'm trying to sleep and he'd go over a phrase or a piece until it was perfect… I used to put the pillow over my head, we had battles.’’

DÉBUTS DE CARRIÈRE

À partir de l’âge de quatorze ans, Chaloff avait commencé à jouer au Izzy Ort's Bar & Grille, un célèbre club situé sur la rue Essex à Boston. Son frère Richard expliquait: ‘’He didn't have a permit to work but he was pretty tall and he went down to see Izzy Ort...and played for him and Izzy liked the sax...and he hired my brother to work nights… My mother used to pray on Sundays that that he'd make it outa there… My brother sat in with bandsmen that were in their thirties and forties… and here he was fourteen, fifteen years old and he played right along with them, and he did so well that they kept him.''

En 1939, à l’âge de seulement seize ans, Chaloff s’était joint au groupe de Tommy Reynolds comme saxophoniste ténor. Par la suite, Chaloff avait joué avec les groupes de Dick Rogers, Shep Fields et Ina Ray Hutton. En juillet 1944, Chaloff avait également fait partie de l’éphémère groupe de Boyd Raeburn aux côtés de Dizzy Gillespie et Al Cohn, avec qui il avait tissé une amitié qui avait duré toute sa vie. C’est d’ailleurs avec Raeburn que Chaloff avait fait ses débuts sur disque en janvier 1945, notamment dans le cadre de la pièce ‘’Interlude’’ de Dizzy Gillespie, qui s’était mieux fait connaître plus tard sous le titre de ‘’A Night in Tunisia.’’ Le son de Chaloff était particulièrement perceptible au début de l’enregistrement.

C’est durant son séjour avec le groupe de Raeburn que Chaloff avait entendu pour la première fois Charlie Parker, qui était devenu sa plus importante influence. Mais selon le critique Stuart Nicholson, plutôt que d’imiter Parker, Chaloff s’était inspiré du jeu très émotif de Parker pour bâtir son propre style. Richard Chaloff avait ajouté que son frère saisissait toutes les occasions pour jouer avec Parker à New York. Richard avait déclaré: ‘’Any time he had the chance he would pal with him. He would sit in with him at night… My brother used to say that he was up till 4,5,6, in the morning with the Bird… All the beboppers found each other out.’’

Mais les tournées avec le groupe de Raeburn étaient épuisantes. Chaloff se rappelait d’ailleurs avoir joué durant soixante soirs consécutifs et avoir parcouru jusqu’à 500 miles entre chaque contrat. C’est d’ailleurs au cours de son séjour avec le groupe que Chaloff avait commencé à consommer de l’héroïne et à ‘’marcher sur les nuages’’ comme il l’avait déclaré lui-même. Au milieu des années 1940, Chaloff avait également travaillé avec Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Harris, George Handy, Oscar Pettiford et Earl Swope. Le 21 septembre 1946, Chaloff avait enregistré sa propre version deu standard ‘’Cherokee’’ sous le titre de ‘’Blue Serge’’.

Après avoir travaillé en 1945-46 avec les big bands de Georgie Auld et Jimmy Dorsey, Chaloff avait enregistré avec de petits groupes de bebop de 1946 à 1947. Parmi ceux-ci, on remarquait le Sonny Berman's' Big Eight, le Bill Harris's Big Eight, le Ralph Burns Quintet et les Red Rodney's Be-Boppers qui comprenaient également Allen Eager au saxophone ténor. Au début de 1947, Chaloff avait d’ailleurs partagé un appartement avec Red Rodney, un autre grand consommateur d’héroïne. C’est ainsi que Chaloff était tombé dans un engrenage dont il avait pris des années à s’affranchir.

Commentant sa collaboration avec Chaloff, le saxophoniste Allen Eager avait déclaré: “Serge was a groovy guy to be around. The three of us were all pretty much in the same zone as far as musical leanings go.” En janvier 1947, Chaloff avait enregistré deux standards avec le groupe de Rodney: ‘’Elevation’’ de Gerry Mulligan et ‘’The Goof and I’’ d’Al Cohn. En 2003, les disques Uptown avaient publié du matériel inédit enregistré lors de cette session qui mettait en vedette  Eager, Chaloff, Jimmy Johnson et Buddy Rich. Toujours en janvier 1947, Chaloff s’était produit au club Three Deuces avec le sextet de Georgie Auld aux côtés de Rodney, Tiny Kahn et Lou Levy. “Wonderful band’’, avait déclaré Chaloff plus tard, même si sa collaboration avec le groupe n’avait pas été tellement lucrative. À la même époque, Chaloff avait également joué au Smalls Paradise de Harlem avec Leo Parker, un autre saxophoniste baryton qui était disparu avant de réaliser son plein potentiel.

Durant la même période, Chaloff avait enregistré deux 78-tours avec son propre sextet pour les disques Savoy. Trois des quatre pièces figurant sur ces 78-tours avaient été écrites et arrangées par Chaloff. La quatrième composition intitulée ‘’Gabardine and Serge’’, avait été écrite par Tiny Kahn. Le critique Marc Myers écrivait: ‘’All four tunes are daredevil cute and blisteringly fast. They showcase tight unison lines and standout solos by four of the six musicians, who are in superb form....(On 'Pumpernickel') Chaloff shows off his inexhaustible and leonine approach to the baritone sax.’’

Chaloff était devenu une grande vedette en 1947 lorsqu’il s’était joint au Second Herd de Woody Herman. Le groupe s’était mérité le surnom de Four Brothers Band après que la section de saxophones composée de Chaloff, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims et Herbie Steward (qui avait été remplacé plus tard par Al Cohn) ait enregistré la composition de Jimmy Giuffre du même nom. Chaloff avait également participé à plusieurs autres enregistrements du groupe, dont ‘’Keen and Peachy’’. Chaloff avait aussi joué en solo sur des pièces comme "The Goof and I" et "Man, Don't Be Ridiculous." Selon Nicholson, sur cette dernière pièce, Chaloff avait démontré ‘’an astonishing technical facility that was quite without precedent on the instrument.’’

En 1949, l’historien et critique Leonard Feather avait écrit dans son livre Inside Be-Bop que le jeu propre et le bon goût de Chaloff avaient fait de lui ‘’the No.1 bop exponent of the baritone.'' Chaloff était d’ailleurs surnommé le ‘’Charlie Parker blanc.’’

Malheureusement, Chaloff avait aussi imité Parker sur un aspect beaucoup moins enviable de sa personnalité: il avait développé une dépendance envers l’héroïne. Selon Gene Lees, à partir de 1947, Chaloff était même devenu non seulement le principal fournisseur du groupe de Woody Herman, mais son consommateur le plus important. Toujours selon Feather, Chaloff déposait une couverture au-dessus des sièges arrière des autobus dans lesquels il se transportait afin de pouvoir vendre sa marchandises plus discrètement. Le critique Whitney Balliett avait ajouté que Chaloff avait ''a satanic reputation as a drug addict whose proselytizing ways with drugs reportedly damaged more people than just himself.’’ Plusieurs musiciens avaient d’ailleurs blâmé Chaloff pour la mort du trompettiste de vingt et un ans Sonny Berman, qui était décédé à la suite d’une overdose le 16 janvier 1947.

Le trompettiste Rolf Ericson, qui s’était joint au groupe de Woody Herman en 1950, avait décrit ainsi l’impact de la consommation de drogues sur les performances de la formation: ‘’In the band Woody had started on the coast...late in 1947, which I heard many times, several of the guys were on narcotics and four were alcoholics. When the band started a night's work they sounded wonderful, but after the intermission, during which they used the needle or lushed, the good music was over. It was horrible to see them sitting on the stage like living dead, peering into little paper envelopes when they weren't playing.''

Commentant le séjour de Chaloff avec le groupe, le critique Gene Lees écrivait: ‘’Hiring him must be accounted one of Woody’s worst errors. Serge was a serious heroin addict and like so many of his kind, a dedicated proselytizer for the drug. He would hook a number of the Second Herd bandsmen.” À l’époque, on estimait qu’environ 50% des saxophonistes du groupe de Herman étaient des adeptes de l’héroïne. D’autres musiciens consommaient des amphétamines, ce qui avait incité Herman à conclure: “Everybody was on practically everything except roller-skates… I’ve chased ‘connections’ out of clubs from coast to coast”. Il y avait aussi quatre alcooliques dans la formation.

Lors d’une performance à Washington, D.C., Herman avait eu une violente discussion avec Chaloff au sujet de sa consommation de drogues. Comme Herman l’avait raconté plus tard au journaliste Gene Lees:

‘’He was getting farther and farther out there, and the farther out he got the more he was sounding like a fagalah. He kept saying, ‘Hey, Woody, baby, I’m straight, man, I’m clean.’ And I shouted, ‘Just play your goddamn part and shut up!'....I was so depressed after that gig. There was this after-hours joint in Washington called the Turf and Grid....I had to fight my way through to get a drink, man. All I wanted was to have a drink and forget it. And finally I get a couple of drinks, and it’s hot in there, and I’m sweating, and somebody’s got their hands on me, and I hear, ‘Hey, Woody, baby, whadya wanna talk to me like that for? I’m straight, baby, I’m straight.’ And it's Mr. Chaloff. And then I remember an old Joe Venuti bit. We were jammed in there, packed in, and… I peed down Serge's leg. You know, man, when you do that to someone, it takes a while before it sinks in what's happened to him. And when Serge realized, he let out a howl like a banshee.''

Mais Chaloff était parfaitement conscient de sa valeur pour le groupe. Lorsque Herman avait menacé de le congédier, Chaloff avait simplement répliqué: “That’s the baritone book. You can’t fire me because I’m the only one that knows it by heart.”

Un des partenaires de Chaloff dans l’orchestre de Woody Herman, le vibraphoniste Terry Gibbs, avait décrit ainsi  le comportement pour le moins erratique de Chaloff:

‘'He'd fall asleep with a cigarette all the time and always burn a hole in a mattress. Always! In about twelve hotels. When we'd go to check out, the hotel owner – Serge always had his hair slicked down even though he hadn't taken a bath for three years...the manager would say, 'Mr Chaloff, you burned a hole in your mattress and...' 'How dare you. I'm the winner of the down beat and Metronome polls. How dare you?'...the manager would always say, 'I'm sorry Mr Chaloff,'...Except one time when the band got off on an air-pistol kick....Serge put a telephone book against the door and was zonked out of his bird...he got three shots at the telephone book and made the biggest hole in the door you ever saw. So when he went to the check out, the guy said, 'Mr Chaloff, it'll cost you.'...He 'how-dared' him a few times. Couldn't get away with it. He said 'Well listen, if I'm gonna pay for the door I want the door.' It was twenty four dollars. So he paid for the door. I happen to be standing close by. 'Hey Terry,' he said. 'Grab this,' and all of a sudden I found myself checking out....We're walking out of the hotel with a door.''

Un autre collègue de Chaloff, le saxophoniste Al Cohn, se demandait même comment il avait pu éviter d’être assassiné. Cohn expliquait: ‘’I don't know how we kept from being killed. Serge would always be drunk. He was quite a drinker. Everything he did, he did too much. So one time we're driving, after work. It's four o'clock in the morning, and he makes a left turn, and we're wondering why the road is so bumpy. Turned out he made a left turn into the railroad tracks, and we're going over the ties.''

Pourtant, Chaloff pouvait être adorable quand il restait sobre. Comme l’avait déclaré Zoot Sims: ‘’When Serge was cleaned up, you know, straight, he could be a delight, really to be around, a lot of fun. He knew how to handle himself. He had that gift. He could get pretty raunchy when he was strung out, but he could also be charming.''

Curieusement, les problèmes de dépendance de Chaloff n’avaient pas semblé affecter outre-mesure ses performances sur scène. Comme Herman l’avait confirmé lui-même dans  le cadre d’une entrevue accordée à William D. Clancy: “Serge was probably the freshest, newest-sounding baritone that had come along in years.”

Finalement, n’en pouvant plus, Herman avait saisi le prétexte de la perte de popularité du swing (à l’époque, plusieurs big bands avaient été contraints de mettre fin à leurs activités pour des raisons économiques) pour mettre fin à l’existence de son groupe en décembre 1949. Il faut dire que l’orchestre avait perdu énormément d’argent: environ 180 000$, l’équivalent de deux millions de dollars au cours actuel.

Faisant référence de façon discrète au comportement de Chaloff au moment de démarrer les activités d’un groupe de plus petite taille à Chicago en 1950, Herman avait déclaré: ‘’'You can't imagine how good it feels to look at my present group and find them all awake. To play a set and not have someone conk out in the middle of a chorus.’’

DERNIÈRES ANNÉES

Après avoir quitté le groupe d’Herman, Chaloff avait passé une partie de l’année 1950 à jouer avec le All Star Octet de Count Basie, un groupe de taille plus modeste que le chef d’orchestre avait formé à la suite du déclin des big bands. À l’époque, le groupe, qui avait avait enregistré quelques pièces pour les disques Victor et Columbia, comprenait Basie, Chaloff, Wardell Gray, Buddy DeFranco, Clark Terry, Freddie Green, Jimmy Lewis et Gus Johnson. Plus tard la même année, Chaloff était retourné à Boston et avait joué avec de petits groupes dans des clubs comme le High Hat, le Petty Lounge et le Red Fox Cafe.

Après être retourné à New York, Chaloff avait formé son propre groupe avec des musiciens comme Earl Swope, Bud Powell, Joe Shulman et Don Lamond en vue d’une performance au club Birland en février 1950. Le critique Barry Ulanov avait commenté dans le magazine Metronome: “Serge Chaloff waved his big baritone horn at Birdland last month and inaugurated what will be a very interesting career as a leader.” Chaloff était alors retourné à Boston pour deux semaines et s’était produit avec une section rythmique avec qui il avait interprété du matériel associé au groupe de Herman.

Une performance de Chaloff au Celebrity Club de Providence, au Rhode Island, avait même été retransmise sur les ondes de la station radiophonique WRIV. L’enregistrement avait éventuellement été publié en 1994 par les disques Uptown dans le cadre d’un CD intitulée Boston 1950. Participaient également à l’enregistrement des musiciens comme Sonny Truitt, Milt Gold, Nat Pierce et Joe Shulman. Le CD comprenait aussi une entrevue de trois minutes avec Chaloff.

Le fait de jouer avec de petits groupes avait permis à Chaloff de retourner à la base et de développer un nouveau style de jeu. En 1951, Chaloff avait déclaré que le fait de se retirer du centre de l’action lui avait permis d’ajouter plus de couleur et de flexibilité à son jeu. Poursuivant dans le même sens, le saxophoniste Al Cohn avait ajouté que le jeu de Chaloff comme soliste ne s’était véritablement développé qu’à partir du moment où il avait décidé de cesser de se produire avec des big bands. En 1952, Chaloff était retourné à Boston et avait enregistré avec le pianiste Dick Twardzik, mais la session n’avait jamais été publiée. Il avait aussi fait des apparitions à la télévision et avait dirigé le groupe-maison d’un club local.

Devenu une grande vedette, Chaloff avait remporté les sondages des magazines Down Beat et Metronome comme meilleur saxophoniste baryton à chaque année de 1949 à 1953. Il avait aussi fait partie des Metronome All-Stars en janvier 1950 aux côtés de  grands noms du jazz comme Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Lee Konitz et Kai Winding.

Malheureusement, Chaloff avait continué de se droguer et de boire abondamment, ce qui l’avait empêché de décrocher des contrats sur une base régulière. Il avait même cessé complètement de jouer en 1952-53.

À la fin de 1953, Chaloff avait tenté de faire un retour sur scène après que le disc jockey de Boston, Bob 'The Robin' Martin lui ait proposé de devenir son gérant. Avec l’aide de Martin, Chaloff avait formé un nouveau groupe qui s’était produit dans des clubs de Boston comme le Jazzorama et le Storyville. Les partenaires musicaux de Chaloff à l’époque étaient Boots Mussulli ou Charlie Mariano au saxophone alto, Herb Pomeroy à la trompette et Dick Twardzik au piano.

Même si du propre aveu de Martin, Chaloff ne jouait pas beaucoup à l’époque en raison de ses antécédents liés à la consommation de narcotiques, il se donnait à fond lorsqu’on lui donnait  l’occasion de performer. Martin expliquait: ‘’You had to talk somebody to give him a chance to play. When you got him a gig in a club or a hotel, he would usually mess it up. But when he did show...and got playing...it was,'Stand back, Baby!’’ Le saxophoniste Jay Migliori, qui avait joué avec Chaloff au Storyville, se rappelait: ‘’Serge was a wild character. We were working at Storyville and, if he was feeling good, he used to let his trousers gradually fall down during the cadenza of his feature, 'Body and Soul.' At the end of the cadenza, his trousers would hit the ground.''

En juin et septembre 1954, Chaloff avait participé à deux sessions pour les disques Storyville de George Wein. Les enregistrements avaient été publiés sous la forme de deux microsillons dix pouces. La première session avait été présentée comme un album conjoint avec le saxophoniste Boots Mussulli, et mettait en vedette un groupe composé de Russ Freeman au piano, de Jimmy Woode à la contrebasse et de Buzzy Drootin à la batterie. Wein écrivait dans les notes de pochette: ‘’ 'An alternate title for this album could be 'Serge Returns'....Each selection in these six was chosen and arranged solely by Serge.'' L’album comprenait cinq standards ainsi qu’une composition de Chaloff intitulée ‘’Zdot’’. La conclusion de la pièce avait été écrite par la mère de Chaloff, Margaret. Sur le second album intitulé The Fable of Mabel, Chaloff s’était produit avec un groupe de neuf musiciens mettant en vedette Charlie Mariano, qui avait écrit trois des cinq compositions de l’album, et Herb Pomeroy, qui avait composé la pièce ‘’Salute to Tiny’’ en hommage au batteur et arrangeur Tiny Kahn. L’ambitieuse pièce-titre avait été écrite par le pianiste Dick Twardzik, qui avait déclaré dans les notes de pochette:

‘’'The Fable of Mabel was introduced to jazz circles in 1951-52 by the Serge Chaloff Quartet. Audiences found this satirical jazz legend a welcome respite from standard night club fare. In this legend, Mabel is depicted as a woman who loves men, music and her silver saxophone that played counterpoint (her own invention which proved impractical). The work is divided into three movements: first, New Orleans; second Classical; and third, Not Too Sad An Ending. The soulful baritone solo by Serge Chaloff traces Mabel's humble beginnings working railroad cars in New Orleans to her emergence as a practising crusader for the cause of Jazz. During her Paris days on the Jazz Houseboat, her struggle for self-expression is symbolized by an unusual saxophone duet Charlie Mariano and Varty Haritrounian. Mabel always said she wanted to go out blowing. She did. The sixth track, Al Killian's 'Lets Jump', was chosen by Chaloff, who said: 'Now that we've proven how advanced we are let's show the people that we can still swing.''

Un mois après avoir complété l’enregistrement, Chaloff était entré dans une profonde crise personnelle. En octobre 1954, sans argent et incapable de se procurer de l’héroïne, Chaloff s’était inscrit volontairement au programme de réhabilitation du Bridgewater State Hospital. Après avoir passé trois mois et demi à l’hôpital, Chaloff avait été libéré en février 1955.

La même année, le gérant Bob Martin avait convaincu les disques Capitol d’enregistrer un album avec Chaloff dans le cadre de la série ‘'Stan Kenton Presents Jazz.’’ Intitulé ‘’Boston Blow-Up!’’, l’album avait été enregistré à New York en avril 1955. Chaloff était accompagné sur l’album de Boots Mussulli au saxophone alto, de Herb Pomeroy à la trompette, de Ray Santisi au piano, d’Everett Evans à la contrebasse et de Jimmy Zitano à la batterie. À l’époque, Pomeroy, Santisi et Zitano avaient développé une très grande complicité, car ils se produisaient régulièrement au Boston's Stable Club, où ils avaient enregistré l’album live Jazz in a Stable pour les disques Transition en mars précédent. Quant à Mussulli, il avait fait partie de l’orchestre de Stan Kenton de 1944 à 1947 et de 1952 à 1954.

Malgré la mauvaise réputation de Chaloff, le critique  Richard Vacca avait écrit que la présence rassurante et stable de Mussilli, qui avait déjà participé à la série Kenton Presents en 1954, avait été d’un grand réconfort pour les disques Capitol. Dans le cadre de l’album, Mussilli avait composé et arrangé cinq nouvelles pièces, dont ‘’Bob the Robin’’, qu’il avait écrite en hommage au gérant de Chaloff, Bob Martin. C’est Pomeroy qui avait écrit les arrangements des standards qui figuraient sur l’album. Très satisfait du déroulement des sessions, Chaloff avait déclaré: ‘’When I came back on the music scene, just recently, I wanted a book of fresh sounding things. I got just what I wanted from Herb and Boots. I think their writing shows us a happy group trying to create new musical entertainment by swinging all the time. Jazz has got to swing; if it doesn't, it loses its feeling of expression. This group and these sides are about the happiest I've been involved with.'' Parmi les principaux faits saillants de l’album, on remarquait les ballades "What's New?" et "Body and Soul". Commentant cette dernière pièce dans le 1956 Metronome Yearbook, le critique Bill Coss avait qualifié l’interprétation de Chaloff de ‘’frightening example of Serge's form, moaning through a seemingly autobiographical portrayal of (his) Body and Soul', an enormously emotional jazz listening experience.'' Jack Tracy, qui avait attribué cinq étoiles à l’album dans sa critique publiée dans le magazine Down Beat, avait ajouté: ‘’'Serge, for years one of music's more chaotic personalities, has made an about face of late and is again flying right. It is evident in his playing, which has become a thing of real beauty… Chaloff offers the best display of his talents ever to be put on wax. It swings, it has heart, it has maturity—it is the long-awaited coalescence of a great talent.''

Le succès inespéré de l’album Boston Blow-Up! avait éventuellement permis à Chaloff de relancer sa carrière et de décrocher de nombreux contrats. La performance de Chaloff au Boston Arts Festival en juin 1955 avait inspiré le commentaire suivant à un critique du Boston Herald: ‘’The ingenuity of Chaloff as a soloist is enormous, and his use of dissonance always conveys a sense of purpose and of form. In 'Body and Soul', he exhibited his capabilities vigorously, taking a deliberate tempo and treating the music with a lyric, delicate, tonal standpoint....the harmonies of the group are tense and the melodies resourceful and they play with a kind of controlled abandon.''

En 1956, Chaloff avait continué de se produire un peu partout à travers les États-Unis, le plus souvent en compagnie d’un saxophoniste alto. Si Chicago, Chaloff était accompagné du saxophoniste Lou Donaldson, son partenaire à Los Angeles était Sonny Stitt. Le groupe comprenait également Leroy Vinnegar, qui était alors le contrebassiste le plus dominant de la Côte ouest.

Le succès de la performance de Chaloff à Los Angeles lui avait permis d’enregistrer un second album pour les disques Capitol en mars 1956. Avaient également participé à l’enregistrement le pianiste Sonny Clark et le contrebassiste Leroy Vinnegar. Comme batteur, on retrouvait Philly Joe Jones, qui était de passage à Los Angeles avec le quintet de Miles Davis. Décrivant l’enregistrement de l’album, Chaloff avait commenté:

‘’'My last record, Boston Blow-up! was one of those carefully planned things....But this time I was feeling a little more easy-going, and I decided to make a record just to blow. I picked out what I felt was the best rhythm section around and told them just to show up...no rehearsals...no tunes set...and trust to luck and musicianship....I'd never worked with these guys before except for jamming briefy with Joe Jones eight years ago, but I knew from hearing them what they could do....We were shooting for an impromptu feeling and we got it. It has more freedom and spark than anything I've recorded before. And I don't think there's a better recommendation than that when it comes to honest jazz.''

Vladimir Somosko écrivait dans sa biographie de Chaloff intitulée ‘’Serge Chaloff: A Musical Biography and Discography’’, publiée en 1998: ‘’'The rapport of the group was as moving as the music, and the net effect was of every note being in place, flawlessly executed, as if even the slightest nuance was carefully chosen for maximum aesthetic impact. This is a level of achievement beyond all but the masters, and from an ensemble that was not even a working group it takes on an aura of the miraculous.''

Analysant le jeu de Chaloff sur la pièce "A Handful of Stars", le critique Stuart Nicholson avait précisé: ‘’Paraphrase becomes central to his performance of 'A Handful of Stars' where he scrupulously avoids stating the melody as written. At one point he plumbs the baritone for a bumptious bass note and soars to the top of the instrument's range in one breath, effortlessly concealing the remarkable technical skill required for such seemingly throw-away trifles. This sheer joy at music making seems to give his playing a life-force of its own.'' Après avoir qualifié l’album de chef-d’oeuvre, Richard Cook et Brian Morton avaient écrit dans le Penguin Guide to Jazz: ‘’Thanks for the Memory" is overpoweringly beautiful as Chaloff creates a series of melodic variations which match the improviser's ideal of fashioning an entirely new song. 'Stairway to the Stars' is almost as fine, and the thoughtful 'The Goof and I' and 'Susie's Blues' show that Chaloff still had plenty of ideas about what could be done with a bebopper's basic materials. This important session has retained all its power.’'

Après la publication de l’album, Chaloff avait continué de travailler sur la Côte ouest, se produisant notamment au Starlite Club d’Hollywood en mai 1956. Durant le même mois, Chaloff avait été victime de douleurs au dos et à l’abdomen qui avaient entraîné une paralysie de ses deux jambes. Chaloff était retourné de toute urgence à Boston, où une opération exploratoire avait permis de découvrir qu’il était atteint d’un cancer de la moelle épinière. Le frère de Chaloff, Richard, expliquait: ‘’We took him down there [Massachusetts General Hospital] and they found he had lesions on his spine.....they operated and took most of the lesions away, and then he went on a series of X-ray treatments. Oh they were terrible. He must have had twenty or twenty-five in a row. And in those days they really gave you heavy doses of it. Then occasionally he got spots on the lungs''.

Malgré sa maladie et le traitement qui s’en était suivi, Chaloff avait continué de se produire en concert. Le 18 juin 1956, Chaloff avait dû se déplacer en chaise roulante pour enregistrer la composition "Billie's Bounce" de Charlie Parker avec les Metronome All Stars. Avaient également participé à l’enregistrement Zoot Sims, Art Blakey, Charles Mingus et Billy Taylor.

Chaloff avait fait son dernier enregistrement dans le cadre de l’album-réunion The Four Brothers... Together Again!. Le groupe était composé de Zoot Sims, d’Al Cohn, d’Herbie Steward et de Chaloff aux saxophones, d’Elliot Lawrence au piano, de Buddy Jones à la contrebasse et de Don Lamond à la batterie. Sur les dernières pièces de l’album, Charlie O'Kane avait remplacé Chaloff dans les parties collectives afin de lui permettre de conserver ses forces pour les solos. Décrivant l’enregistrement de l’album, Richard Chaloff avait commenté: ‘’He took a wheelchair down to make that recording, you know. They didn't think he was going to make it. I heard stories from people there. But when he stood up and played, you never knew he was a sick fellow. He played dynamic. If you listen to the record he sounds like the old Serge. He pulled himself together. I don't know how he did it. But he had tremendous drive, tremendous stamina.’’ Dans son compte rendu publié dans le magazine Down Beat, le critique Don Gold écrivait: ‘’'This last session before his death represents a fervent expression of a fatally ill man. It is a kind of significant farewell in the language he knew best.''

Chaloff avait présenté sa dernière performance au Stable Club de Boston en mai 1957. Lors d’une entrevue qu’il avait accordée en 1993, le pianiste Charlie ‘’the Whale’’ Johnson avait décrit les dernières performances de Chaloff de la façon suivante: ‘’'I remember pushing Chaloff's wheelchair into The Stable for his last appearances there. He was in bad shape but could still really play, standing leaning on a pillar. However, he didn't have much stamina. He couldn't really finish the gig. I also had to go get pot and booze for him. He was still using these steadily, even in the hospital at the end.''

Chaloff était à l’agonie lorsqu’il avait été admis au Massachusetts General Hospital le 15 juillet 1957. Selon son frère Richard, Chaloff avait apporté son saxophone ainsi que son singe miniature à l’hôpital. Richard expliquait:

‘'He still had the kinkajou monkey Mother got him to keep him company. And he had his horn. I was told they wheeled him into a vacant operating theatre so he could practise, and that was his last gig, his last public performance, solo baritone sax alone in an operating theatre. Nurses, doctors and even patients were standing outside and listening. He fought it to the end. Mother would visit him and urge him on, saying, 'You can beat it' and things. But that last day, they brought a priest to visit him, and the priest saw Serge in bed looking so wasted, and the priest thought he was supposed to perform the last rites. Serge woke up in the middle of it and really panicked, sliding away from him and yelling 'No! No! Get out!' But after that he seemed to give up. I think that's when he realized it was all over.''

Chaloff était mort le lendemain. Il avait seulement trente-trois ans. Chaloff a été inhumé au Forest Hills Cemetery, dans le comté de Suffolk, au Massachusetts.

Reconnu comme le premier saxophoniste baryton à avoir joué du bebop, Chaloff avait contribué à démontrer, à l’instar de ses pairs Leo Parker et Cecil Payne, que le saxophone baryton pouvait très bien s’adapter à l’évolution du jazz moderne.

©-2024, tous droits réservés, Les Productions de l’Imaginaire historique

SOURCES:

JACK, Gordon. ‘’Serge Chaloff: the bebop lowdown.’’ Jazz Journal, 11 mai 2021.

‘’Serge Chaloff.’’ Wikipedia, 2024.

‘’Serge Chaloff.’’ All About Jazz, 2024.

[afterthegreatunknown]

my story will be starring me just like yours ooh ooh

who knows when will it end

what matters most is how you bring joy to life so

After escaping the prison car, the sixteen-year-old Ellington decides it’s best to be on the low-down for the time being. As luck would have it, there’s also another sixteen-year-old stuck in the same predicament as her. That girl’s name is Kit, and for a whole month, the two stuck together. Ellington thought Kit as a very nice girl, though also mysterious. Kit didn’t say her last name, or how she got arrested in the first place, other than admitting to stealing something in the City and got caught.

The mystery surrounding Kit grew throughout the month, with Kit growing more nervous whenever Elington talks of the Volunteer Fire Department, or how one member, Lemony Snicket, betrayed her trust by claiming to help Ellington try finding her father, yet knew where he was the whole time -and knew he was a villain- and pushed him to his death. Ellington suspected the possibility Kit is part of VFD and is Lemony’s sister. After all, Kit never said her surname. But Ellington told herself otherwise, that maybe if Kit is in VFD, she’s his sister figure. Ellington just wants to have a friend who won’t hurt her, in any way or form. That’s all she wants, even for a short amount of time.

But said hurt happened. The reveal happened at a motel they were staying at. Kit tried to explain everything, but Ellington left the room to think about her next move of actions. Upon returning back, Kit is also gone, but foolishly left her things. Ellington figures it’s best to leave, and as petty retaliation, stole some of Kit’s belongings. Just some money (not all of it though) and a list of what Ellington suspect is of volunteers, mainly of Kit’s generation.

Ellington after this point, is pretty much on the run of sorts. She moves from places to places, uses fake names, and steals what she can. When becoming of age, Ellington decides to hold down temporary jobs, taking payment in cash or getting checks to deposit them into cash. Despite not wanting too, Ellington meets volunteers from VFD, mainly from Kit and Lemony’s generation, and usually once. Having done a good job of hiding her identity, Ellington takes some pleasure in seeing these volunteers questioning themselves if the person standing before them is who they think they are (Jacques Snicket, aka, Kit and Lemony’s brother, gave Ellington a warning about herself. If Ellington wasn’t so hurt, she would find it funny).

There is however, one exception. This particular volunteer had interacted with Ellington before he was recruited, when they were children living in Killdeer Field and attended the same school. Different classes, same grade, students who saw each other only at lunchtime and in passing. They interacted once, and most people would forget something simple. Yet Ellington never could forget, as strange as it sounds.

In their second meeting, Ellington -who currently lives far away from the City and Land of Districts- recognized the man as her former classmate. Ellington also recognized him as part of the Volunteer Fire Department, for the list of volunteers names she stole from Kit years ago included him-name, brief description, and personal notes. Yet when the man introduced himself, he gave a different name. A name Ellington faintly recalls, as the man’s birth name.

Ellington quickly deduces the man doesn’t recognize her, and plays pretend to not recognize him either. She also deduces her former classmate is done with VFD, alongside two others (one who is also on the fore-mentioned list). Considering they’re also with children -a set of triplets, and a girl with triangle glasses- Ellington suspect they want out for their sake. So Ellington decides to help them, provided they do something for her in return.

Due to a series of events, the man returns something to Ellington. Or rather, of her father. Ellington does her best to keep her emotions in as she asks him about it. And the man tells Ellington how an old classmate gave it to him to stop a bleeding nose. And Ellington is stun; stun that while he doesn’t remember her, he remembers her good deed. Upon getting some alone time (the man decided to look around the area they were at), Ellington cried tears of joy.  As strange as it sounds, despite everything her father ever done -especially to her- Ellington grateful for having one thing back of his.

[nocternalrandomness]

NASA's WB-57 research aircraft at Edwards AFB ready to depart back to Ellington Field, TX

[h00dsw0rld]

James Ellington

[gordopickett]

El Gordo Just Might (For All Mankind 2.4 "Pathfinder" missing scene)

The first part is the entire hangar scene from ep 2.4 "Pathfinder," and then I've written a "missing scene" where Gordo & Ed take out their frustrations with each other on the Ellington Field apron.

El Gordo Just Might (3116 words) by GordoPickett Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: For All Mankind (TV 2019) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Gordo Stevens, Ed Baldwin Additional Tags: for all mankind, Episode: s02e04 Pathfinder (For All Mankind, For All Mankind Pathfinder, For All Mankind missing scene, For All Mankind deleted scene, Missing Scene, Deleted Scene, Pathfinder - Freeform, hangar, T-38, El Gordo, El Gordo Just Might, Male Friendship, Dogfighting, NASA, Ellington Field, Fighting, Fear, Anxiety, Tough Love, turning point Series: Part 3 of For All Mankind Summary: The first part is the entire hangar scene from ep 2.4 "Pathfinder," and then I've written a "missing scene" where Gordo & Ed take out their frustrations with each other on the Ellington Field apron.

[blogwelberfotos-blog]

astronautas do Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT) Butch Wilmore e Suni Williams em atividades pré-vôo do T-38 em Ellington Field. Data da foto: 16 de agosto de 2022. Local: Ellington Field, Hangar 276/Flight Line.

[library-child]

Killdeer Fields

Written for @asouefanworkevent

Content warning: Alcoholism, utter mental deterioration

"And a man calling himself Hangfire told you you'd never see your father again? That's all?" police officer Hallward asked.

Ellington just nodded, too tired to speak.

He put his pen and notebook away and gave her a sympathetic look. The station typewriter had already been put away in one of the wooden boxes stacked against the walls of the shed. The police station itself had been flooded months ago when the water had reached the center of Killdeer Fields. Officer Hallward had moved to an abandoned farm shed uptown, but now, he was leaving along with everyone else.

"What are we to do now?"

"I'll send a telegram to the authorities once I'm at the train station. But first, we'll need to find someone who will take you along."

"I can't leave!" Ellington protested. "What if he comes back and I'm not here?"

Officer Hallward sighed. "No one will ever come back here."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ellington ran up the muddy road past the abandoned farms, ignoring her aching feet. Everyone had always complained about the upper part of Main Street being an uneven clay road. Now, it was the only part left. All the shiny new cobblestones downtown had been washed away by brackish water.

She reached the last farm where some sickly-looking cows still stood on the field.

"Bill," she called, knocking at the door of the farmhouse. She had only ever known the farmer who had supplied her father with milk for the rescued animals as Old Bill. "Are you home?"

There was no answer, but Ellington found the door was open. The smell of rot and cold smoke hit her as she moved down a dim hallway until she arrived in the kitchen and nearly gagged.

Old Bill sat slumped on a bench at the table, surrounded by bottles and dirty dishes. The table and the floor were stained with tobacco. His sparse hair and worn clothes were crusted with dirt.

"Why, Ellington." He broke into a slow smile as he noticed her. His few remaining teeth were black. "How nice. Where's your father? I haven't seen him in a while."

Ellington swallowed hard to force back the tears. She was terrified. "So - so you don't know where he might be? He's been kidnapped! Nobody knows why!"

Bill coughed violently, steadying himself by clutching a half-empty whisky bottle.

"Kidnapped, you say? Ah. Probably those blasted other farmers. They've been making my cows sick, you know. They're jealous. Every night, they sneak over the fence to poison them."

Ellington ran.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I understand you've been asking everyone about your father's whereabouts."

Mrs. Gray, mayor no more, watched the movers carrying the furniture out of her grand hall onto waiting trucks. She had lost the election as the flood had risen.

"You claim he was kidnapped by a man named Hangfire."

"Hangfire claimed it. He called me on the phone. His voice was terrible." Ellington had no strength left to hold back her tears. She just wept.

Mrs. Gray sighed with a mixture of pity and disgust on her face.

"You need to stop that. Nobody has time to deal with such nonsense. You should have come to see me before anyone else."

She gave Ellington a handkerchief and patted her shoulder.

"Pack your things and come back here tomorrow morning. We'll take you with us and get you a job at a farm. You are a capable girl. In a few years, you'll surely manage to build your own place. Wouldn't you like that?"

Ellington didn't argue with Mrs. Gray. She went home to pack her suitcase. But she never showed up at Mrs. Gray's house. Instead, she dragged her suitcase behind her all the way to the train station and snuck into an empty cargo car. Her arms ached from carrying her father's record player. She feared the music might give her away, but nobody was around, and she couldn't bear the silence.