From Riches to Rags: An African Odyssey, Part X / The Bounce Chronicles: Tales of Terror from the Wrong Side of the Runway

“Kalli!!” I bellowed into the hangar like a man casually requesting tea after detonating a hand grenade in the living room. Kalli, blissfully unaware of the incoming catastrophe, was wedged under the cowling of a Cessna 172, elbow-deep in what I could only assume was mechanical witchcraft involving the nose wheel. He looked up, squinting like a mole dragged into daylight.
“Do you have some yellow duct tape by any chance?” I asked, as if that were a standard request in a facility dedicated to keeping planes airborne and not held together by stationery supplies.

He froze mid-ratchet.
“What do you need yellow duct tape for?” he asked, the suspicion already starting to bloom behind his eyes.

“Oh, nothing serious,” I lied with the easy grace of a career felon denying involvement. “Just a bit of paint came off the wing. I want to patch it up real quick—I’m not done practicing short take-offs and landings.”

Kalli sighed and began folding himself out of the engine bay like a battered patio chair on its last season.
“Let me see that paint that came off,” he muttered, like a man who already knew he was about to witness something that would haunt him until retirement.

We walked outside.

My Cub was parked with its “sunny side” facing the hangar, as if posing for a family photo while hiding a stab wound. From the front it looked almost respectable. From the side Kalli hadn’t seen yet... it looked like an aircraft that had given up. The right wing slumped at an angle of existential despair—like it had just received bad news from its doctor and was ready to be reincarnated as scrap metal.

“Didn’t you say ‘some paint came off,’ Marcel?”

“I sure did, Kalli,” I said brightly, gesturing to the chaos. “Look, the paint’s gone—on the right wingtip!”

He stared at me, then at the aviation holocaust in front of him. His face morphed through several phases: disbelief, confusion, grief, and something that looked dangerously close to theological crisis.

“What wingtip, Marcel? There is no wingtip. There is no canvas. There’s barely any structure left. What did you hit, the concept of responsibility? It looks like you flew through the Battle of Midway in reverse. And yellow duct tape? Seriously? How is yellow duct tape going to fix this crime scene?!”

I shrugged.

“I think it’s aviation yellow,” I offered, as if colour coordination might somehow distract from the fact I had effectively tried to murder an airplane with enthusiasm and overconfidence.

Kalli fumbled for his cigarettes.
It was his default setting whenever confronted with technical ignorance, mechanical heresy, or a pilot too confident to read the manual—so, basically, hourly. Given his permanent exposure to a potpourri of self-loving aviators, he was smoking more than a Chinese coal plant during a blackout.

An opening excerpt from this chapter remains available here.
The full manuscript is currently reserved for submission and publication.

Marcel Romdane,
proudly—still no idea why—limping off.