Phases of Gravity (22 page)

"I just don't get it," says Tucker and there is anger in his voice. "The T-38's the safest goddamn plane in the goddamn Air Force."

Baedecker says nothing.

"It averages two goddamn accidents per one hundred thousand hours in the air," says Tucker. "Name me one other supersonic aircraft with that sort of record, Dick."

Baedecker crosses to the window and looks out. It is still raining.

"And it doesn't matter a goddamn bit, does it?" says Tucker. He pours himself a third drink. "It never does, does it?"

"No," says Baedecker. "It doesn't."

There is a knock and Katie Wilson enters. Tucker's wife, frizzy-blond and sharp-featured, at first might be mistaken for an aging cocktail waitress with little on her mind, but then one would notice the sharp intelligence and alert sensitivity behind the heavy makeup and southern drawl. "Richard," she says, "I'm glad you're back."

"Sorry I'm so late," he says.

"Diane wants to talk to you," says Katie. "I made her get ready for bed because I knew she'd be up all night playing the perfect hostess otherwise. She's been awake for forty-eight hours straight, and her due date is in another week, for heaven's sake."

"I won't keep her up long, Katie," says Baedecker and goes up the stairs.

Diane Muldorff is in her robe, sitting in a blue chaise longue, reading a magazine. She looks very pregnant to Baedecker. She beckons him in.

"I'm glad you're here, Richard."

"Sorry I'm so late, Di," he says. "I rode up to McChord with Bill Munsen and Stephen Fields."

Diane nods and sets the magazine down. "Close the door, will you, Richard?"

He does so and then comes closer to sit on the low chair near her dresser. He looks at her. Diane's dark hair is freshly brushed, her cheeks pink from a recent scrubbing, but her eyes cannot hide the fatigue and sorrow of the past few days.

"Will you do me a favor, Richard?"

"Anything," Baedecker says truthfully.

"Colonel Fields, Bob . . . the others . . . they've promised to keep me informed about the crash investigation . . ." She breaks off.

Baedecker watches her and waits.

"Richard, will you look into it yourself? I mean, not just follow the official inquiry, but look into it yourself and tell me everything you find out?"

Baedecker hesitates a second, puzzled, and then he reaches across and takes her hand. "Of course I will, Di. If you want me to. But I doubt that I'll find anything that the Crash Board won't."

Diane nods, but her grip is cool and insistent. "But you'll try?"

"Yes," says Baedecker.

Diane touches her cheek and looks down as if suddenly dizzy. "There are so many little things," she says.

"What do you mean?" asks Baedecker.

"Things I don't understand," she says. "David took the helicopter out to Lonerock, did you know that?"

"No."

"The weather got worse so he came back in the car we'd stored there," she says. "But why did he go there at all?"

"I thought he worked on his book out there," says Baedecker.

"He was supposed to stop by Salem one night after the fund-raising meeting in Portland," Diane says. "Instead, he flew out to Lonerock when the house was all closed up. We weren't planning to stay there until weeks after the baby was born."

Baedecker touches her arm, holds it gently.

"Richard," she says, "did you know that David's cancer had returned? I didn't think he had told anyone, but I thought perhaps he might have called . . ."

"I didn't even have a phone where I was, remember, Di?" he says. "You had to send that telegram."

"Yes, I remember," she says, her voice ragged with exhaustion. "I just thought . . . He didn't tell me, Richard. His doctor in Washington is a friend . . . He called the day after the accident. The disease had spread to David's liver and bone marrow. They had wanted to do a complete chemotherapy treatment in the spring, using a combination of drugs called MOPP. David had refused. That kind of chemotherapy causes sterility in most cases. Dave had had some radiation and the laparotomy, I knew that. I didn't know about the other . . ."

"Dave told me in October that they were pretty sure they'd caught it all," says Baedecker.

"Yes," says Diane, "they found it again just before Christmas. David didn't tell me. He was supposed to have a flight physical next week. He never would have passed it."

"Richard!" comes Katie's voice up the stairs. "Telephone!"

"In a minute," calls Baedecker. He takes Diane's hand again. "What are you thinking, Di?"

She looks directly at him. In spite of her tiredness and pregnancy, she does not look vulnerable to Baedecker, only beautiful and determined.

"I want to know why he went out to Lonerock when he didn't have to," she says firmly. "I want to know why he flew that T-38 by himself when he could have waited a few hours for a commercial flight. I want to know why he stayed in that plane when he must have known it was going down." Diane takes a breath and smoothes her robe. She squeezes his hand hard enough for it to be painful. "Richard, I want to know why David is dead rather than here with me waiting for our child to be born."

Baedecker stands up. "I promise I'll do my best," he says. He kisses her on the forehead and helps her up. "Come on now, get in bed and go to sleep. You're going to have guests for breakfast. I may be out early, but I'll call you before I come back."

Diane looks at him as he pauses by the door. "Good night, Richard."

"Good night, Di."

Downstairs, Katie is waiting for him. "It's long distance, Richard. I told them to call back, but they're waiting."

He walks into the kitchen to take it there. "Thanks, Kate," he says. "Know who it is?"

"Someone named Maggie," calls Katie. "Maggie Brown. She says that it's important."

Dave landed the Huey on a ranch half a mile beyond Lonerock. There was a short grassy field, a tattered windsock hanging limp from the cupola of an old barn, and an ancient Stearman two-seater tied down between the barn and the ranch house. "Welcome to Lonerock International Airport," said Dave as he switched off the last of the circuit breakers. "Please remain seated until the aircraft comes to a complete stop at the terminal." The rotors turned more slowly and then stopped.

"Does every ghost town have an airport?" asked Baedecker. He took off his earphones and cap, ran his fingers through his thinning hair, and shook his head. He could still hear the roar of the turbine in his ears.

"Only where the ghosts are fliers," said Dave.

A man walked slowly from the barn to meet them. He was younger than either Muldorff or Baedecker, but his face had been darkened and textured by years of working in the sun. He wore western boots, faded jeans, a black cap, and an Indian-turquoise belt buckle. The left sleeve of his plaid shirt was pinned at the shoulder. "Hullo, Dave," he called. "Wondered if you was comin' over this weekend."

"Evening, Kink," said Dave. "Kink, meet Richard Baedecker, friend from the old days."

"Kink," said Baedecker as they shook hands. He liked the restrained strength in the man's handshake and the creased laugh lines around his blue eyes.

"Kink Weltner here served three tours as a helicopter crew chief in 'Nam," said Dave. "He lets me park the bird here now and then. Somehow he came into the possession of a big, underground tank of aviation-grade kerosene."

The rancher walked over and ran his hand lovingly along the cowling of the Huey. "I can't believe this rusted pile of shit's still flying. Did Chico replace that omni gauge?"

"Yeah," said Dave, "but you might want to take a look inside."

"I'll pull the hell-hole cover when I refuel it," said Kink.

"See you later," said Dave and led the way toward the barn. It was cool here in the valley. Baedecker carried his goosedown coat in one hand and his black flight bag in the other. He

looked up to watch the hills to the east catch the last bands of evening sunlight. Brittle cottonwood leaves stood out against the fragile blue sky. There was a jeep parked near the barn, keys in the ignition, and Dave threw his stuff in the back and hopped in. Baedecker joined him, grabbing the roll bar as Dave pulled out onto the gravel road at high speed.

"Nice to have your own crew chief way out here," said Baedecker. "Did you know him in Vietnam?"

"Nope. Met him after Di and I bought the house here in '76."

"Did he lose his arm in the war?"

Dave shook his head. "Never got touched over there. Three months after he was discharged, he got drunk and rolled a pickup outside of the Dalles."

They drove into Lonerock past the jagged tooth of a boulder and the closed-up church. Far across the valley, the road they had followed from Condon was a white line on the shadowed wall of the cliff. Baedecker noticed several abandoned houses set back in weeds along the street, caught a glimpse of the old school to the right through the trees, and then Dave pulled to a stop in front of a white house with a tin roof and a low picket fence out front. The lawn was well tended, there was a flagstone patio to one side, and a hummingbird feeder hung from a young lilac tree out front. "Casa Muldorff," announced Dave and lifted Baedecker's bag out of the jeep.

The guest room was on the second floor, tucked under the eaves. Baedecker could imagine the sound of rain on the tin roof above. He respected the amount of work that had gone into the old structure. Dave and Diane had ripped out walls, reinforced the floors, added a fireplace in the living room and a stove in the kitchen, repaired the foundation, added electrical wiring and indoor plumbing, remodeled the kitchen, and turned a low attic into a small but comfortable second floor. "Other than that," Dave had said, "the house is pretty much the way we found it." Back in the days when the Oregon Trail was a recent memory, the house had served as a post office, then sheriff's office, and even a morgue for a while before sagging into disrepair with the rest of the little town. Now the guest bedroom had clean white walls, crisp white curtains, a high brass bed, and an antique dresser with a white bowl and pitcher on it. Baedecker looked out the window through baring branches at the small front yard and dirt street beyond. He could imagine buggies passing by but little other traffic. The remnants of a low, board sidewalk lay rotting in the grass outside the picket fence.

"Come on," called Dave from downstairs. "I'll show you the town before it gets too dark."

It did not take long to see the entire town, even on foot. A hundred feet beyond Dave's house, the dirt road doglegged to the north and became Main Street for one block. The county road hooked left from it, crossing a low bridge and continuing off through wheat and alfalfa fields to the cliff two miles west. The stream Baedecker had seen from the air curved around through Dave's property past the weathered shed he called a garage.

The silence was deep enough that Baedecker heard their footsteps on the gravel of Main Street as intrusive. A few houses in town looked occupied, and there was an old mobile home parked behind one boarded-up structure, but most of the buildings were weedchoked and weathered, rafters open to the elements. Three stores sat closed and idle on the west side of Main Street, two with rusted light fixtures sans bulbs over their doorways. A gas pump outside the abandoned store offered high-test at thirty-one cents a gallon. The fly-specked sign hanging diagonally in the window read COKE CLOSED THE PAUSE THAT REFRESHES.

"Is it officially a ghost town?" asked Baedecker.

"Sure is," said Dave. "The official census is four hundred eighty-nine ghosts and eighteen people at the height of the summer season."

"What about the people who stay here year 'round? What do they do?"

Dave shrugged. "There are a couple of retired farmers and ranchers. Solly in the trailer back there won the Washington lottery a few years ago and settled out here with his two million."

"You're kidding," said Baedecker.

"Never kid," said Dave. "Come on, I want you to meet someone."

They walked a block and a half east to the edge of town and then up a sharp grade to where the brick school sat. It was an imposing structure, two stories tall and then some with an oversized, glass-enclosed belfry atop it. As they came closer, Baedecker could see that much care had gone into the old building's rehabilitation. A well-tended garden filled part of what had been the schoolyard, the bricks had been sandblasted clean some years ago, the front door was nicely carved, and white curtains were tied back in the tall windows.

Baedecker was puffing slightly when they reached the front door. Dave grinned. "Need to jog more, Dickie." He tapped loudly with a brass knocker. Baedecker jumped slightly as a voice came from a metal tube set into the doorframe near his ear.

"It's Dave Muldorff, Miz Callahan," shouted Dave into the tube. "Brought a friend with me."

Baedecker recognized the antiquated mouthpiece as part of an old speaking-tube system such as he had seen only in movies and once in a tour of Mark Twain's home in Hartford.

There was a muffled reply that Baedecker translated as "come up" and then a buzz as the door opened. Baedecker was reminded of the entrance foyer to his family's apartment building on Kildare Street in Chicago before the war. As he entered, he half expected to smell the mixture of moldy carpet, varnished wood, and boiled cabbage that had meant homecoming to him for the years of his early childhood. He did not. The interior of the school smelled of furniture polish and the evening breeze coming through open windows.

Baedecker was fascinated by the glimpses of rooms as they ascended the two flights of stairs. A large classroom on the first floor had been transformed into an oversized living room. Part of the long blackboard remained but was now bracketed by built-in bookcases holding hundreds of volumes. A few pieces of quality antique furniture sat here and there on a polished wood floor, and a small area had been set off by a Persian carpet and comfortably overstuffed sofa and chairs.

On the second story, as far above the ground as a normal third story, Baedecker caught a glimpse of a book-filled study behind sliding doors and a bedroom with a single, canopied bed alone in the center of six hundred square feet of polished wood. Two cats moved quickly into the shadows at the sound of footsteps. Baedecker followed Dave up a wrought-iron spiral staircase that obviously had been added after the building ceased functioning as a school. They passed through a trapdoor cut into the ceiling and suddenly they were in light again, emerging onto what might have been the pilothouse of a tall stern-wheeler.