The Misty Pilots
Rutan put aside his usual freewheeling inclinations and did his duty by the book. He paid Howie's bar bills, which were modest. He sorted through Howie's stuff and made sure it was packed carefully and addressed properly. It was grim work, but Rutan had asked for it. This was the real war he had sought, and it was much more devastating than he had imagined. While preparing for combat, he had thought mainly about the risks to himself. Those, it turned out, he had been instinctively equipped to handle. But the sudden disappearance of a buddy, and wrapping up his life as if you were closing out a bank account–that was hard. It was gloom, guilt, anger, and sadness rolling over you in waves, one after the other, then rolling over you again. Facing AAA seemed a lot easier.
He got everything packed up and sent it off to Howie's family in Ohio. In addition to clothing, pictures, letters, and other odds and ends, he included a check for $96.35, the amount of cash that had been among Howie's stuff. And Rutan apologized for the condition of some of Howie's things. "I checked the laundry and picked up all his underwear," Rutan wrote to Howie's wife, Monalee. "They are in the shipment. They may not look very clean but that is the best that Phu Cat laundry can do." Then he offered the only meager reassurance that he could. "Monalee I think a lot of Howard and I want to do all I can to see that all is taken care of on this end," he wrote. "I am sorry but we have no news as to Howard's status." For the next 23 years, that is virtually all Monalee and her family would know about what had happened to Howie.
advertisement
