America America (13 page)

“He didn’t have time, love,” said my father.

“And why did they decide to take you so suddenly?” she asked.

“I don’t have the faintest idea,” I answered.

And that was the truth. I had the impression, actually, from the way Christian yanked my hand as we ran all the way back along the two-track, then pulled my arm firmly as we crossed the landing strip, then stopped and turned around at the top rung of the plane’s boarding ladder to smooth my hair—I had the impression that my coming had been an item of contention. But I didn’t mention this to my parents. Aberdeen White’s steps shook suddenly and an engine came on. Christian took a deep breath and settled her skirt; then we ducked inside.

June Metarey was in the pilot’s seat. She turned and smiled quickly at me, then went back to studying a clipboard in her lap. Mr. Metarey was next to her, and he welcomed me with a nod, then a wave. I closed my eyes to adjust them to the dim light, and when I opened them again I noticed how utilitarian everything looked. The walls were unfinished, just white metal panels punctuated by bolts and welds. This seemed like a secret to me, suddenly, some interesting and unpredictable aspect of the Metareys’ private world that I’d been unexpectedly allowed to see. I don’t know why: I suppose I’d expected luxury. But the seating was hard and it rode in rows of metal track, and the chairs had tall backrests with a system of clips and hooks for the seat belts. Behind her mother, Christian was already working expertly with hers. She pointed me to the place across the aisle, and I made my way toward the front. Beyond us was a third row, and where the sixth seat should have been was an empty section of floor, covered by a blanket. Next to the blanket sat Clara with Churchill on her lap. She was holding him down, but even in the shadows I could see his hindquarters shaking.

“Don’t worry about Churchill,” Mr. Metarey said. “He’s just excited. My wife thinks he’s scared, but I know my own dog.”

“He’s frightened as all get out,” said Mrs. Metarey without looking up.

“Okay,” he said, “but he’s worse if we leave him. You know that, dear.”

“Were there seat belts?” asked my mother.

“Of course. Really good ones. Shoulder belts, too. From both sides.”

“The dog must have been scared, is right,” she said.

“That dog has seen more in his life than most grown men,” said my father, sipping his beer.

“You sit there,” said Mr. Metarey, pointing where Christian had. “You’ll get the best view on the way in.” He pointed to the bank of clouds shadowing the land to the west. “Looks like just a bit of cover on the way out.”

When I looked through Clara’s window I saw Aberdeen Red, so close that its double wing nearly touched our own. Its color looked duller than it did in the sky, like a fish that had been pulled from the water. After struggling for a few moments with the complicated arrangement of clips on my seatback, I allowed Mr. Metarey to turn and fasten my shoulder belts for me. The plane bucked, and off to my right the second engine came on.

Mrs. Metarey made some notations on her clipboard, spoke a few words to her husband, who checked a clipboard of his own, and then, with no more ceremony than she might have displayed backing the Galaxy out of the garage, she pushed gently on the throttle and we taxied out of the hangar, rolled through a turn, and then without pausing sped off down the runway.

First the dark grass sprinting below. Then the broad limbs of the oaks. Then their tops, stretching in a rust-colored lake punctuated by the brilliant maples and the tallest white pines. Then the hills. Then the blue, blue sky. My chest dropping inside me. The propellers roaring. The plane banking and heading west, the turn I had seen Mrs. Metarey make a hundred times from below in the fields. We leveled off and I managed to calm myself. The propellers quieted a notch. Ahead of us the estate was in shadow. Everywhere else it was ablaze with light, and the wings were even more brilliant than the land. We bumped slightly and their ends bounced. The metal dark, then light again. A moment later wisps like tracer bullets over the tips. Then gray sky again and everything was gone.

“Clouds, Corey,” said Mr. Metarey.

Oblivion now. My eyes found nothing to hold on to. Churchill barking. We bumped hard, then smoothed out. Then bumped again. The plane rumbled with the low churning of the engines, and underneath it came the steady yapping of the dog. Out the window, depth disappeared and the double panes confused me. Tiny droplets shimmied between the layers of glass; I’d mistaken them for trees in the distance. Truly nothing for the eye. I could barely make out the propellers. We bumped again, harder this time. Then again. Churchill let out a low howl. I held my seat.

“Now get ready,” said Christian.

And then we were through, out into sun that lit a sea of white to the horizon. I have to admit I think I shouted.

“Oh, no,” said my mother. “What did you shout?”

“I don’t know. ‘Wow,’ or something.”

Mrs. Metarey turned and smiled. She made a whoop.

“Women’s lib,” said my mother.

A sea of brilliant white now. Again Mrs. Metarey whooped, then dipped the plane back. A moment later, out again. Then in. Then out. Our startling shadow gamboling on the cloud tops. Churchill was barking steadily now, twisting madly in circles on his bed of blankets behind me. Mr. Metarey himself laughed, his head thrown back. He turned, smiling broadly at me, and slapped me on the knee. “Hey, Mr. Sifter,” he said, “not bad, is it?”

“Is that what he calls you?” asked my father.

“He calls me Corey.”

“It makes you believe in Almighty God,” said Mr. Metarey, throwing back his head again and laughing, “
doesn’t
it now?”

Then June Metarey lifted the nose, and my stomach dropped out. We headed straight up and at the same time turned back, settling flat only after I was sure we were going to flip. My vision spun and straightened. Out the window the horizon leveled again, mercifully, and it was blue, and then we were beyond the cloud cover once more, heading east toward the Metarey estate over open land that at last I recognized again. The River Lethe and Little Shelter Brook curving languorously below. Our shadow preceding us to the northwest, leaping over the stream banks and rushing headlong through the treetops. Soon I saw the shapes of the fields I knew, the matching red wind vanes spinning atop all four of the Metarey barns, the double streaks of blue sky that were the fly pools, suddenly splintered by a covey of landing ducks. The white top of the press tent where I’d been arranging chairs that morning for the Senator.

Mr. Metarey must have seen it, too. “Don’t know if we’re going to get anybody showing up tomorrow,” he said, turning back to me. “But we sure want to get out in front with the unions.” He smiled. “Never hurts to get your name in the papers, anyway.”

“Yes, sir,” I said over the engines. “Especially with the president going to Russia.” This was only a rumor, but I’d read about it at school.

He smiled. “I see you’re getting something out of that education, at least.”

“I’m grateful, sir.”

Mrs. Metarey turned in the pilot’s seat. “Do you want to take it?”

I thought for a moment that she was speaking to me, but Liam Metarey answered. “Only if it’s okay with our guest.”

When I realized what they were talking about, I said, “Of course, Mr. Metarey, it’s fine.”

“What
were
they talking about?” asked my mother.

“About taking the plane. She was asking if he wanted to fly it.”

“He knows how to do
that
, too?” said my mother.

My father looked up. “He probably built the thing, love.”

Mrs. Metarey unclipped herself from the belts, then rose and moved between us to the back. I looked over the seat and saw that her husband had taken over from a second set of controls. Then I looked over at Christian, who seemed unconcerned. And to tell the truth, so was I. Mr. Metarey was as capable a human being as I’ve ever met, before then or since, and though it’s ridiculous to say it, I think even in that situation I trusted him as much as I trusted his wife. Perhaps more. I leaned as far as I could to the side to watch. He drew back on the wheel with his finger, and I felt us bank to the south.

“Back pressure,” Mrs. Metarey said from behind me. “Left rudder to start.”

“At your service.”

“Nose up. Steady. Now bring it through.”

Mrs. Metarey was behind me now, and when I turned I saw that she was trying to calm the dog, who was barking plaintively. When she succeeded in closing his snout, the barks became pathetic whines through his teeth. She held him close about the neck, burying his face in her chest so that he couldn’t see. For a moment, this would stop the barking and whining; but then he would struggle out, and as soon as his eyes were free he would begin again, thumping his tail and stamping in place and whimpering. At last Mrs. Metarey seemed to subdue him in her grasp, and he lay down against her, still sighing occasionally but finally burying his head in the crook of her arm.

“So,” Christian said, “you want to try it, too?”

Clara pointed to the empty pilot’s seat. “Flying a plane’s easy,” she said.

“They wanted
you
to fly it?” said my mother. She glanced at my father.

“She was kidding, Mom.”

“Good thing,” said my father, taking another sip of his beer. Then he added, “I thought it might be something they teach you at boarding school.”

“It’s
landing
that’s the trick,” said Clara, from behind me. “I’ve heard that a million times.”

“That’s right, Corey,” said Mr. Metarey from the front seat. “Flying is easy. Taking off’s nothing. And there’s plenty of room up here.” He gestured out the window. “It’s
landing
that’s the trick. Flying in clear weather? I bet you could do it right now without a problem. You’re welcome to give it a spin while we’re up here.”

“No, thank you.”

“Smart kid,” said my father.

“Shhh,” said my mother. “Let him finish.”

Presently Mrs. Metarey stood, and Churchill began whimpering again, curled on his rousted blankets with his tail beating rhythmically on the floor. Clara was patting his head now as Mrs. Metarey passed between us and took her place again at the controls. I must say, I saw a look of relief pass over her husband’s features when she had belted herself in again and taken hold of the wheel by a single finger at its edge. She pulled the plane up, then edged gradually to the south and began to descend. Over Little Shelter Brook, on the far third of the property, she brought us down low so that we skimmed the treetops, passing over the pool the beavers had damned years ago, a motionless azure mirror that suddenly showed us in our entirety, streaking west.

She gained altitude again and pointed us toward the landing strip, which she then angled in on from all the cardinal points of the compass, turning at the three corners of a rectangle until she finally brought us down aside the long edge, a little more steeply, pulling up gracefully just before we landed so that the wheels barely bumped on the tarmac. The descent had been so steady that I hadn’t been scared at all, but the sound of the engines idling down as we rolled up the runway filled me with a relief that was almost as powerful, I think, as my ecstasy had been when we first broke through the clouds. She brought us to a halt alongside the hangar.

“Good dog,” Christian said, and reached back to pat Churchill. He whimpered again and rose next to her, pressing against her leg. “Watch this, Corey.”

Mr. Metarey came around between us. “Now hold him,” he said to Christian.

He first reached back to touch the dog’s brow, which instantly quieted him; then he turned to unlatch the door. He was swinging it out when a pale blur flashed in the sunny opening. By the time Churchill’s paws touched the ground he was already sprinting madly for the woods, his forelegs appearing through his hind ones until he was nothing but a pale, undulating ghost, bounding through the trees.

“Well,” Mr. Metarey said in a philosophical voice, rising and letting down the steps for the rest of us, “I guess he didn’t like that, after all.”

My father set down his beer. “Not one bit,” he said.

“Oh, Corey,” said my mother. “That poor dog.” She laughed gently then, but something crossed her expression and she sat down at the table, touching her head the way she did in those days, and turned to look out the window.

I
T’S DIFFICULT TO SAY
how much of my life has turned on the kindness of Astor Highbridge: having a friend at Dunleavy was what allowed me to stay and to do everything that followed. He was on scholarship, himself, as it turned out, the son of a schoolteacher—the monogrammed shirts were hand-me-downs from an uncle. As the term went on he couldn’t have been friendlier; but even his friendship could barely ease the disquiet I felt nearly every moment I was awake. For a month I flinched at every shadow that came swooping over the grass from the shrieking mass of crows in the oaks across the quad. In class I said nothing beyond the obligatory.

But then I began to study. That’s how I buried my fear.

I suppose it’s predictable, that the ones who become the best students are the ones who feel the least qualified—for that’s what I felt, and that’s what I became. My inborn talent was surely near the bottom of my class, but from the outset my grades were near the top. There was a boy my year who could multiply three-digit numbers in his head; another who knew the details of every battle of the Civil War; and a Korean kid from Brooklyn, my only better in grades, who memorized everything we read. But my marks were almost as good as his, and better than the others’. If Mr. Burrows, our history teacher, mentioned the Second Battle of Manassas, I wrote it down and went straight to the library to read about it—and about the first one, too; if Mrs. Merrilews, our English teacher, quoted a line from Emily Dickinson, I set out to read every poem she wrote. This wasn’t as difficult as it sounds. I’d found that by some natural aptitude I was a fast reader, and all my life I’d been a hard worker. Now I was working at my studies.