CHAPTER 18BIG PALAVER
A little bit of maintenance for Andre, some runs for Stumpy, and the prospect of many more flights with Andre brightened my spirits considerably. Andre seemed a solid type, whether he said much or not, and I slowly began to trust him. The beach house was better now too. It was just the three of us—Deet, Tony, and me—with plenty of room and, being pilots, plenty of money.
The isolation that the beach house provided separated me from the mayhem and occasional squalor of downtown Monrovia, which, at the end of the day, was a great relief. Lately, I had been thinking about sketching many of the interesting and beautiful sights in Liberia. I had always, since I was a child, been able to draw. By the time I was in high school I was making regular sketches of everything I
