Monk Hunter was a dashing aviator, the only really dashing aviator I
have ever known. There was dash to the cut and fit of his uniforms, dash
to the shine and the fit of his boots, dash to the twirl and flip of the
cane he carried. There was dash to the set of his magnificently erect
and darkly handsome head, dash in the flare of his nostrils and the
gleam of his flashing black eyes, dash in his violently dynamic gestures
and in his torrential, staccatoed, highly inflected speech which he
aimed at you as he had aimed machine guns at enemy flyers during the war
when he had shot down nine of them.
There was especial dash to Monk's mustache. Only Monk could have worn
that mustache. I saw him once without it, and something seemed to have
gone out of him as it went out of Samson when they clipped his hair. He
looked naked and helpless.
It was a big mustache, the kind you see in tintypes of swains of long
ago. It bristled, and Monk had a way about him in twirling it that you
should have seen.
Poor Monk took off at Selfridge one day in an army pursuit ship. He even
did that with dash. He held it low after the take-off and then started a
clean, left, sweeping climb into the blue sky.
We all saw the white smoke start trailing out behind his ship. Then with
bated breath we watched the ship slump slowly over from its gestured
climbing and nose straight down inexorably toward the ice of Lake St.
Clair. Monk's chute blossomed out behind the diving ship just before it
disappeared behind the trees.
We all jumped into cars and rushed madly over to where we thought it had
hit. We found Monk, unhurt, except for the jar from landing on the ice,
waving his arms, wildly shouting that the ship had caught fire and to
look what the damned thing had done. We looked at the ship, but Monk was
still gesticulating excitedly, so we looked at him. He meant to look
what it had done to him.
We all started laughing like hell. We were really laughing with Monk,
not at him. He appreciated it, too.
His mustache had been burnt clear off on one side.