Flights (32 page)

He seemed to be safely south of the clouds and flew level, free and happy. He laughed aloud again in delight, bobbing his wings a bit to echo his feelings.

The radio crackled, harsh and startling. “Aircraft 9–0 Zulu, are you on frequency?”

He stared silently out the window, everything falling apart in front of him.

“Aircraft 9–0 Zulu repeat are you on frequency?”

The tone recalled Sister Theresa seeing him on the roof, his father hearing of the detention. Broken windows, ruined dress pants, late arrivals, and poor report cards. They knew the plane was missing, they knew he had it and they knew it was still in the air.

He sat immobilized by the shock of his failure. It had been crucial that he land undetected, to allow for his unnoticed disappearance on the bicycle, but he couldn't land undetected anywhere now with the designation he was sporting on the side of his fuselage. His plan had been destroyed, that quickly, that easily. He wiped his eyes furiously. He had to think. It couldn't be all over after everything he'd been through. Below him breakers ran a jagged white track along the shore, curving and growing in distant foamy lines. He was passing a very large airport to his left, and the land below opened into a great irregular bay closed to the sea by a long spit crested with dunes. If it was Shinnecock Bay, as he guessed it was from the map, Southampton was directly east, and he would be approaching East Hampton Airport in minutes.

He couldn't land there, he thought. He couldn't just quit. But where else could he go? What other airport could he find from the air without navigational aids? Montauk had an airport, he knew, but that was as good as giving up: they'd be waiting there as well, and it was exposed and isolated, with nowhere to go once he landed.

“Biddy. Biddy, this is your father. What the good Christ do you think you're doing?”

He stared at the radio, stunned. The engine's roar changed in pitch to signal he'd let the nose drop, and he corrected it.

“Biddy, tell us where you are.” His father sounded as though the lifeboats were sinking or he was hanging from a cliff. On the radar screen his blip would be indistinguishable from any others. “Biddy, you got up all right but how are you going to get down? Biddy! Let them talk you down!” His father's last cry shook him, and he reached for the microphone. The crackling continued.

“Aircraft 9–0 Zulu, are you on frequency? Aircraft 9–0 Zulu, are you on frequency? Acknowledge.”

The coast was flowing steadily under the cowling as the Cessna's nose ate up space and distance. There was literally nowhere to go. He began to cry, from frustration and tension. I could go right to Great Gull Island, he thought. I could go right to it and land in the water.

But he recognized the absurdity of the idea: he'd destroy the plane, kill himself. Or hurt himself and drown. And how could that possibly go undetected?

The voice on the radio asked again if he was on frequency. His father's voice broke in. “Biddy,” he said. “Please.”

The blue sky hung unbroken before him. The extent to which he'd hurt people had been reflected in his father's final cry, and it had been much more than he had guessed. Every action he was taking was connected to others and hurting in ever-widening circles and ways and there was no longer any hope of preserving the illusion of his actions enjoying a total independence in the world, of his escape taking place in a vacuum. Was any of this going to make him, or anyone else, or anything about his life; any better?

East Hampton Airport rolled into sight over the drum of the horizon. He lifted the microphone and pushed the “Send” button. “I'm all right,” he said. “I'll be right down.” He lowered it to his lap at the answering gabble of voices and shut off the receiver. He turned the frequency to 132.25 for East Hampton. He glanced into the distance in the northeast, trying for a glimpse, at least a glimpse, after having come this far, of the north fork and Plum or Great Gull Island in the haze. But it all remained indistinct and imprecise, however beautiful. He switched the receiver back on and raised the microphone.

“East Hampton, this is 9–0 Zulu,” he said. His back hurt and his head ached. “What's your active runway?”

“Ah, Roger, Zulu, we have traffic taking off and coming in on 28.” There was a pause. “Ah, 9–0 Zulu, do you want to be talked down? Acknowledge.”

He pressed to answer, the radio silence hissing expectantly. “No,” he said. “No, thank you.” He switched off the receiver.

He was approaching from the southeast. There were no clouds over the airport, and no traffic he could make out. A far-off V of birds stroked across the sky toward the land.

Below him houses and gray roads rolled by, breaking the irregular green of the trees: he was away from the coast. The airport grew larger, the three runways a gray triangle pointed at him, the service area as vivid against the dark green pines as he remembered. Far below he could make out tiny multicolored ovals drifting up toward him—balloons, he realized with a start, their threadlike strings undulating behind. The sun caught on a random car windshield, sparkling like a diamond.

He pushed left rudder hard and went into a bank, thrusting the control column forward and the nose down as he did. The sky went over the top of the canopy and the ground centered itself on the windshield and began to climb slowly to meet him. The altimeter was dropping, the needle retreating from 3 past four calibrated notches to 2 and still descending when he checked the airspeed indicator, just leaving the green arc of normal operating range at 130 mph and making its way through the yellow, labeled
CAUTION
. He eased back on the throttle, keeping the indicator away from the red line, and the triangle of runway shook gently and grew in size in his windshield, tilting from the level as his wings did, and when he felt he couldn't go any lower he began to pull up, the ground rushing along under him like a film out of control, vague shapes and colors streaking by, blurring and disappearing in an instant. Tree after tree swept past and roads and a hill and the airport suddenly loomed in front of him from out of the trees like someone rising from tall grass, the central buildings rushing at him, and he was too low too low the wheels his belly would hit surely and he was over, skimming the billowing carpet of treetops again, the altimeter creeping higher as he pulled up and around.

Climbing, he turned on the receiver. There was a loud burst of static. “Uh, 9–0 Zulu, have you lost your mind? Acknowledge.”

His climb and bank were carrying his nose around to the sun, which flooded white and blinding across the canopy. He leveled out east of the airport, the plane sideslipping a bit as he did, and came around again, on line with the runway. He eased the nose up and the throttle forward and his airspeed began to drop.

He lifted the microphone from his lap. “This is 9–0 Zulu. Can I have landing clearance?” he said.

A voice crackled back. “Jesus Christ, by all means, Zulu.”

He was already on his approach. He extended his flaps. A utility right-of-way flashed by beneath him, the power lines and treetops closer than he expected.

“Watch your airspeed, Zulu,” the radio said. Things seemed to slow. Trees drifted by. The curve of a road. A field with a white dog outlined against tall weeds.

“Keep your nose up, Zulu. Keep it on the horizon. Stay level. Watch your airspeed.” He did. It read 90. Everything was spinning by him. He was so low he saw only trees and then they stopped and it was flat and wide before him, gray streaked with black, and the white number 28 glided up to meet him and he could hear the radio as if it were in someone else's cockpit—“Ease back! Ease back!”—and, keeping the top of his cowling in line with the horizon, easing the nose still farther back, cutting the power still more, he caught one last glimpse of the airspeed indicator, vaguely remembering it as too high, before he hit.

He bounced, jerking forward and upward in the seat as if catapulted, his shoulder harness straining against him, the wings outside the cockpit swaying against the level ground flashing past. And he lifted the nose still more and cut the throttle almost to nothing, and the plane seemed to hesitate in the air before dropping again, like a sofa, to the runway, the concussion nearly shaking his hands from the wheel but leaving him on the tarmac, rolling instead of flying, with quite a distance of safety margin still to go. He rolled and rolled and began to slow and his toes found the brakes again, a little too soon, but again, learning quickly, and he taxied to the very edge of the runway and bumped off onto the access area, turning until trees and trunks filled his vision and the plane rolled to a stop. He reached forward to switch the engine off and the propellers began to materialize, blurs cutting a half circle in front of him before hacking and chopping to a halt, gleaming and smooth. He wasn't used to the silence, and small noises seemed out of proportion, welcome.

Across the long bisection of runways to his right he could make out a lone police car, a bar of red-and-blue lights on its roof, approaching on the access road from the parking area, its tires audible on the gravel. There had been no foam on the runway, no battery of rescue vehicles, no
SWAT
team. And no crash. There was just a lone police car, in no discernible hurry. As it grew closer, he unbuckled his harness, anxious to get the bike and the bag out of the cargo area himself. He wanted no help at this point. He'd come this far, he had a way to go, and he wanted to be ready by the time they arrived.

About the Author

Jim Shepard (b. 1956) is the author of four short story collections and seven novels, most recently
The Book of Aron
, which has been shortlisted for both the Kirkus Prize and the American Library Association Andrew Carnegie Medal. Originally from Connecticut, Shepard now lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He is the J. Leland Miller Professor of English at Williams College, where he teaches creative writing and film. He won the Story Prize for his collection
Like You'd Understand, Anyway
, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award. Shepard's stories have appeared in the
New Yorker
, the
Paris Review
, the
Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine
, and
McSweeney's Quarterly Concern
, among other publications; five have been selected for the
Best American Short Stories
, two for the
PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories
, and one for a Pushcart Prize.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1983 by Jim Shepard

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint from previously published material:

Maraville Music Corp.: Excerpt from “High Hopes” from the MGM/UA Entertainment Company motion picture
A Hole in the Head
, words by Sammy Cahn, music by James Van Heusen. © 1959 SINCAP Productions. Assigned to Maraville Music Corp. © 1959 Maraville Music Corp. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured.

Cover design by Kat JK Lee

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2670-3

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

EARLY BIRD BOOKS

FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

BE THE FIRST TO KNOW—

NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY!