Solo

This is a true story.

In May of 1963, Gordon Cooper, the last American ever to fly solo into space, was snug in Faith 7’s capsule and could feel the countdown to liftoff in his throbbing heart. Cooper was always cooler than the center seed of a cucumber as a jet pilot, and now he was prepared for his greatest adventure. But he would see things that were far from routine on this day. The fuse was lit without incident and Faith 7 thundered upwards into the crisp blue Florida sky.

“Faith 7 is all go!” Cooper cried enthusiastically.

Another singular adventure was also brewing in a Happy Valley miles away.

Out Route 43, turning past the grain elevators, surrounded by the fields and orchards of approaching summer near Mayberry, it seemed you could taste the crust of the Carolina morning. An almost spiritual hamlet lies before you where your own heart throbs as you draw closer to home. The rain from the previous evening was burning off in the morning sun, and a whippoorwill swooped down from a moist pine tree next to the All Souls Church and paused for a moment on a brick wall nearby. It fluttered away when the nervous clickety-click footsteps of John Masters strolled by. He was making a beeline for the courthouse.

“He’s awful Andy. Just plain awful!”
The choir director was itching like mad. Besides the hives, his bow tie was way too tight, and that made him even more miserable.

“Well, he’s not THAT bad, John,” Andy countered softly, sitting at his desk and glancing at the back room. He heard the door latch quietly. Barney walked out the back door into the alley with his head drooping and hands stuffed in his pockets. He wandered for a bit, but soon naturally steered towards Eleanor Poultice’s home.

“I sent all the way to New York for Hymn 911, and I want a better soloist, and it’s just that Barney is….,” John started.

“Yeah, yeah, I know John, but the solo means so much to him,” he said quietly.

“If only Rafe Hollister didn’t have laryngitis…” John mumbled as he turned to go. Rafe’s voice wasn’t getting any better, and the smoke bellowing up from his hidden still surely wasn’t doing him any good to boot. Maybe swigs of his own wares could’ve fixed him up.

Ed Sawyer was peering through his scope and caught a glimpse of the Mercury capsule as it hurled like a shiny beacon of light in the distance. He was standing on the southwestern edge of the crater Aristarchus, the moon’s brightest and most dazzling feature, and he waved furiously to Cooper on each orbit of his 34-hour journey. The soloist was too busy with experiments most of the time, plus he was ready to try that tasty powdered roast beef mush.

Steam rose from Aunt Bee’s roast beef as she removed it from the oven. Clara Edwards was sitting there munching on the edge of a cookie, giving her ever-ready opinions on the latest gossip.

“I just know that if it were my Gale, Mr. Master’s problem would be solved,” she said, in a know-it-all tone of voice.
Aunt Bee started to reply in defense of the deputy to her busybody friend, but felt that it was best not to get in a tug-of-war against Clara and her Gale, and changed the subject.

“Nuts! I…umm…mean…Nutmeg. Did you bring the spice for the pies we’re making?” Bee said through gritted teeth.

Barney sunk into the deep chair cushion. Miss Poultice, bearing a remarkable resemblance to Big Maude Tyler, launched immediately into her routine.

“In through the nose…out through the mouth!” she began to repeat. Barney held up his hand.

“Wait, please, Eleanor. It’s no use,” he said with a sad face, his eyes dark with despair.

“What’s this then?”

“I’ve lost the confidence of the director, so it’s no use.”

“My dear!” she cried, rising from the piano bench. “You can not let one man’s opinion knock you off course in your stride towards great endeavors,” she bellowed, looking down at him with her chin high. “What if Columbus had let the doubters stifle him, or Copernicus listened to those who scoffed at his theory of a rotating Earth, or if Edison had so easily given up on finding the right filament for his incandescent light bulb?” she thundered.

“But…”

“No, sir!” The breathing lessons began again. Barney went along, his spirits rose a bit, and his face started to burn with passion again.

“You’re right, Eleanor! They laughed at Buzz Fluhart too didn’t they?”

One hundred miles up, just before powering down, the astronaut peered out his tiny window and was startled to find when the contrast was just right he could clearly make out houses, roads, and trucks below. After his mission ended he would have a hard time convincing his superiors that he could also see a small village and smoke rising from a fire as well. The production of moonshine causes a great deal of smoke and Cooper snapped a photo in his fascination.
Moving from light into the shadows as he orbited, Cooper whispered a little prayer into his tape recorder:

….Father, thank You for the success we have had flying this flight. Thank You for the privilege of being able to be in this position, to be up in this wondrous place, seeing all these many startling, wondrous things that You've created. Help guide and direct all of us, that we may shape our lives to be good, that we may be much better……

Helen Crump’s eyebrows were set rigid. Arm in arm with Andy, they strolled passed Foley’s Market, turned at The Grand, and were headed back towards the Courthouse. They were in the middle of one of those ‘grab a little moment here and there’ times. Andy could tell she was ready to ask something important ‘cause she drew his arm closer to her and squeezed it a bit tighter.

“If Mr. Masters doesn’t want Barney as the soloist, why doesn’t he tell him?”

“Oh….I don’t know, Helen.” He smiled and said, “I guess that’s what friends are for. Anyway, he knows now.”

“Then he will just have to do it. I know he can do it,” she said with fierce determination.

Andy gazed at his true love in amazement.
“Well, you little firecracker you!”
At the courthouse now, right smack in the middle of the open, he held the slender, handsome, brunette close and pressed his lips against hers.

In the backroom of the concert hall Thelma Lou reached up and straightened Barney’s bow tie. It didn’t need fixing of course. She was just silently expressing her confidence towards him. He did the same by running his fingers softly through her beautiful mellowed-applejack colored hair which she had pulled back. Mr. Masters walked by them and nodded, avoiding eye contact with his defiant soloist.

The hall was full with folks lingering towards their seats. Opie Taylor fidgeted in his chair, repeatedly sliding down it in his boredom. From the back row of the chorus, Andy saw this and shook his head and grimaced in his direction. When his son started to make swatting motions to catch flies, he shook his head even more furiously.

Everyone was in their place, the lights in the hall dimmed as the focus was now upon the choir settled in a half-circle on stage. John Masters stepped forward to polite applause, gave a quick introduction to the attentive audience regarding the historic Hymn 911, turned his back and raised his arms to begin. A knowing nod to the accompanist Hazel set forth a beautiful melody.

Three quarters of the way through it on cue, Barney stepped forward, and in an easy, natural, falsetto, rather than a strained tenor, and with a look on his face of utter content, sang:

…He comes to judge the nations,
A terror to His foes,
A Light of consolations
And blessed Hope to those
Who love the Lord's appearing.
O glorious Sun, now come,
Send forth Thy beams so cheering,
And guide us safely home…

Sitting in back of the hall in the shadows, Miss Poultice, looking remarkably like Ralph Henderson, crossed her arms and with her nose in the air peered at the scene in front of her with a great deal of satisfaction. Her student surpassed any success of the great Leonard Blush on this one evening.

Clara Edwards pretended to search for something in her handbag not wanting anyone to see she was weeping. When the choir finished the audience stood and applauded, and as the triumphant soloist stepped forward to take a bow, their cheers reverberated throughout the hall and echoed off the bell in the tower. The troubadour’s face flushed with humble-humility as he rose. One by one, people came forward and pumped his hand. Then, Thelma Lou stood on her tiptoes before him, threw her arms around his neck, and planted a bright red smudge upon his cheek.

On one of his final orbit’s, the soloist high in the Heavens was so happy he began to sing too. Listening to him aboard the tracking ship Coastal Sentry in the ‘Pa-cif-ic’, his buddy John Glenn pushed his earphones closer, laughed softly and grinned.
‘What a character,’ he thought.

Ed Sawyer looked down at the silver sand in-between his toes and giggled.

The End

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