Flight (35 page)

“Whoa. It’s a big un. Not much fight, but
purty good weight. Lemme see if it’s a keeper.”

Joe senses a moon-lit shadow hovering over
him. He feels a tug on his collar and realizes that his rescuer is
trying to extract something from his coat.

“Wheejammy. That’s tough skin. Oughta cut it
out, mebbe. Less see.”

While the man tugs and twists, Joe surrenders
to the exquisite joy of being unexpectedly, inexplicably alive. His
throat is burned raw. Just thinking of how much it hurts causes Joe
to heave. As he turns his head, river water gushes from his mouth
and nose.

“Willikers, he’s spoutin. Ahoy,
Moby…no…lessee…too little…ah…Noby, yessir, Noby Dick, the little
runty whale, he blows. My first, but runty little whale. Ahoy, Noby
One, thar he blows.”

As his rescuer himself spouts, Joe lets his
awareness lazily drift down from his throat to his arms and chest.
The cold he discovers there is so profoundly different from
anything he has ever experienced that it takes a moment to
comprehend what it is. Once he does, a spark of consciousness
triggers what should have been done autonomically. Joe’s body
suddenly begins bucking like a wasp-stung pony.

“Whoa, Nellie. Where’d my whale go? Whoa! We
gotta get this here bronco broke.”

A massive weight centers itself on Joe’s
hips. Rough and powerful hands begin pulling his clothes off.

“Dang, he’s got prom queen skin. Get him
nekkid, then what?”

While his naked body convulses, but stays on
shore, Joe’s mind slides back into the river.

When he comes to, Joe finds himself wrapped
in a smoky smelling thermet and curled around a small fire. His
throat still is raw, but the inner cold has disappeared. In fact,
his face is too hot. When he shifts his head away, his action draws
his savior’s attention.

“Hey, Noby One, you there? Feelin better? You
wuz shakin so fierce I thought the devil had your soul.”

Joe straightens his body.

“Lay still, little one. Ain’t you smart
enough to get well slow? You stay still and I won’t. Well, Noby,
let’s get ourselves acquainted. My name’s Bob Tom Damall. And
danged if I don’t sometimes, but not this here time. I’ve been
watching you since a little after you stole my boat. You owe me,
Noby. You owe me big for that. My most favorite boat. Just two days
away from makin it all nice, I was. Gone now. Unless it gits
snagged up somewhere down river. But, don’t be countin on it, Noby,
cuz the last I seen it, it was hurrying toward New Jersey like a
damall tame horse toward stable oats.”

Even after Joe’s eyes adjust to the
early-morning sunlight, he can’t make out any facial features on
the man beyond a pair of small bright crow’s eyes and a prophet’s
beard. Looking down, Joe can see that his rescuers hands are huge.
With them planted on his knees, the fingers reach half-way down his
calves.

When Joe pushes himself up on one elbow, Bob
Tom diddles his head in despair at Joe’s stupidity. The boy stares
at the anchorite for ten seconds trying to figure out if he is
dangerous before asking, “Who are you?”

“Tole you—Bob Tom Damall.”

“But….”

“Oh, I unnerstand, Noby. You don’t really
wanna know who I am. You wanna know what I do cuz you think what I
do makes me who I am. Who knows. You cud be right. Well, first
thing,” Bob Tom flares a pair of drab gray wings so that he can
lean sideways. He picks up a monstrous fishing pole with a twenty
centimeter red speckled lure and points it at Joe’s face, “First
thing, and mebbe the most important thing for you, I’m the best
Damall flyin fly fisherman on the Hudson. That’s no lie. No one
catches bigger, and no one catches better, and Damall certain, no
one catches more. And I’m bound to be the first fly fisherman in
these here parts to catch me a Noby Whale in midstream on the
Hudson. Although I’ve pulled out a few rotters in my years. Whew,
still remember the stink of one—old, old woman couldn’t a weighed
more en forty k. Looked bigger, of course, cuz of the bloat. But,
she sure rotted up bigger’n she was and smelled even bigger’n she
looked.”

Feeling his stomach roil, Joe tries to change
the subject, “You make your living fishing?”

Bob Tom Damall’s stertorous laugh rolls up
and down the river like cannon fire.

“Noby, I don’t hardly make a livin’ fishin,
furrin and some other things best done at night. But, I survive and
have been since I come up here in ’62.”

“Up from where?”

The tip of the fishing pole transits a one
hundred twenty degree arc.

“Ain’t it obvious? From down there. I come up
and watched a slew of people goin the other way and I said, ‘You
know what, Bob Tom? You’re right and they’re plumb wrong.’ And I’ll
still say that whether that’s right or not cause I’m a feller slow
to make up his mind and Damall slower to change it. Now, what about
you, Noby? You just tell me what you do, so’s I’ll know eggzactly
who you are and jist eggzactly how to judge you.”

Joe slowly works himself upright to gain some
time. He studies the fire to gain even more. Finally, he looks into
Bob Tom’s amused eyes and feels obliged to give him some of the
truth.

“I’m Joe. I ran away from school and then I
ran away from the people who helped me run away from school.”

“Yessir, and, then, you done run away with my
boat.”

Embarrassed despite the humor in Bob Tom’s
voice, Joe murmurs, “Yes, I did.”

“And, then, that Damall boat ran away from
you.”

When Joe laughs, his throat hurts, “Yes, it
did.”

“While you were fumblin your way downriver,
no offense, but one of the things you ain’t is a riverman, was it
all of you runnin away or was some of you runnin toward
somethin?”

Joe shrugs his shoulders and gives a small
grin, “Damall, if I know.”

Bob Tom shakes his pole at Joe, “See, Noby,
hangin around me just a bit and already you’re smarter.”

The hermit starts to point somewhere with the
pole, then carefully puts it down on the ground, “My experience is
away’s always easier than toward.”

Bob Tom raises a wing so that he can stretch
an arm behind the rock he is sitting on. Joe is startled to see
that the old man has skinwings. Gray wrinkled folds of leather.
Those fusty appendages command Joe’s attention even as the ancient
hauls up a raggedy pak of a design as ancient as his wings.

“Iffen you’re all puked out, mightn you be
gettin hungry?”

As Joe slowly chews strips of dried,
black-colored meat, which Bob Tom insists is from the biggest,
blackest bear ever caught in the Adirondacks, the river
man…mountain…man, Joe is uncertain which way to think of him, tells
stories about things he has killed of which there is a great
diversity in species, but a singularity in characteristics. Each is
the biggest, fattest, tastiest, tallest, fiercest, furriest,
fastest animal of its kind ever seen in or above the Adirondacks or
on or in the Hudson River and its tributaries.

While Bob Tom talks non-stop, his body goes
from absolute stillness—wings relaxed, legs extended, hands on
knees, unblinking eyes focused on the fire—as still as a zenpro or
a hunting dog on point, to a flurry of little acts, like a squirrel
in its nest—poking the fire, adding branches, re-arranging the
rocks at his feet, using a twig to settle the folds of his
wings.

The Sisyphean sun has rolled itself over the
zenith when Bob Tom asks, “What’s your plan, Noby One?”

“The plan was that after the search for me
died down I was going to go Montreal.”

“Noby, my new friend, you just might be a
tetch dyslexic. Montreality, as I see fit to call it have’n been
there a time or two, is north and this here river flows south.
You’ve got to go more en forty thousand kliks, some of em none too
easy, goin the way you’re goin, to get to old Montreality.”

Joe, who has already felt a dozen different
emotions about Bob Tom, experiences a surge of anger swell within
him.

“I know where Montreal is. I planned to go
downriver to Albany and then back up to Montreal.”

“So, where’s that plan got you now?”

Joe bangs his fists on his knees in
exasperation.

“I don’t know.”

”But, not to the mountain of reality?”

Joe says nothing, but shakes his head in
despair.

“Because?”

Joe yells, “Because I didn’t know it was
going to be such a fight in the river.”

“Yore a mite feisty, Noby, but even so, I’ve
got two thoughts. The first is that just because you kin put a boat
on a river don’t make you a riverman. I’m a riverman. You may be
lots of things. I wouldn’t know about that, but you ain’t a
riverman. My second thought is that it ain’t much of a plan or,
mebbe, not much of a man behind the plan, if all it takes is a
little bit of roily water to change what a person wants to do.”

“What do you know? I’m fifteen. I escaped
school and the hawks and my parents. I escaped the Greenlanders. I
got myself here.”

“Son, those Greenlanders if they’s the ones I
think they are, ain’t nothing more en a den of bristle-lipped
wimmin. And you’re here cuz I was kind enough to pull you here,
instead of doin what I oughta done, which is rescue my very
favorite boat. And, furthermore, if I was to ask you where here is,
I bet you’d be hard put to say much more en this here is between
the North Pole and equator. So, don’t yell at me, and, especially
don’t yell at the kind soul who let you steal his favorite boat
instead of making you into jerky and who rescued you and not his
dear and favorite boat when a little bitty water couldn’t be
handled by a whiny little man boy. Seems to me you ain’t much
more’n just a little bitty whale with a big spout.”

Joe fights the tears that are forming in the
corners of his eyes, but loses.

When Bob Tom sees the welling in the boy’s
eyes, he directs his fishing pole toward the Hudson.

“There’s plenty of water out there, Noby One.
I don’t guess we need any more. Let’s see if we can’t figger out
doin somethin a little more useful.”

Joe and Bob Tom spend most of the day resting
and making plans. Joe tells more of his story, but he doesn’t tell
his rescuer any of the details of his family because he isn’t sure
whether Bob Tom Damall, if he knew, might not think it was a good
idea to kidnap and ransom Joe Fflowers.

The plan the two finally come up with is that
Bob Tom will help Joe get to Albany, where he will catch a hover
train to Montreal.

After telling Joe to stay put, Bob Tom takes
to the air and flies north up the river. About an hour later Joe
spies him flying back south towing a canoe behind.

“Let’s get goin. I’m feelin awful bad bout
stealin this. Seems sad to have a sin on my soul for such a poor
excuse for a boat. I wouldn’t a needed to do it if you hadn’t a
stole and then lost that favorite boat of mine.”

Feeling cockier from the food and rest, and
also thinking that the boat Bob Tom has dragged ashore looks much
better than what he lost, Joe asks, “Why didn’t you just fly south
and look for your boat?”

“Yore gonna question the judgment of the best
waterman on the river? Get in this here sorry boat before I toss
you back where I found you.”

While Bob Tom breaks down his fishing pole
until it fits into a case no longer than a commuter’s umbrella, Joe
climbs into the canoe and sits on the forward thwart.

The river man looks at Joe and shrugs in
resignation.

“Tarnation, Noby, you’re no smarter en a
barnyard chicken. In the back, son, in the back, unless yore
hankerin for another little swim.”

Though he doesn’t understand Bob Tom’s
reasoning for unbalancing the boat, Joe crawls into the back of the
canoe. His stupidity colors his cheeks and neck when Bob Tom lashes
his fishing pole into the canoe, hooks a light line from the bow of
the canoe to his belt, shoves the boat into the water, and launches
himself into the air. From fifteen meters overhead, the grizzled
man tows the canoe into the center of the river to catch as much
current as he can. Once in mid-river, Bob Tom lazily flaps his
fusty wings kilometer after kilometer.

As a hockey player, Joe is used to expending
all of his energy in two minute spurts. The longer Bob Tom flies,
the higher he rises in Joe’s esteem.

After the sun finishes its labors and goes
home, the night sky is clear. The stars are jewel bright and the
world is silent except for the skirring of the canoe through the
current. After what must have been an hour, Bob Tom’s voice booms
down to ask if Joe’s parents are the worrying kind.

“They probably didn’t start out worrying.
They probably started out being angry that I didn’t do what they
wanted. By now, though, I’m sure they’re worried, especially my
mother.”

Bob Tom thunders, “How much does that bother
you?”

“I’ve been too busy to think about it.”

“That’s Damall busy, Noby. Mebbe I should
save my wind for breathin and let you take this time, since you
ain’t got much to do but sit back and let me work, to think about
how you feel about what you’re putting your folks through.”

Joe tips his head to yell up, “I’m not gone
forever. I just need to stay away long enough so that I can’t
fledge.”

“Okay, Noby One, hearin you say that, I just
decided that I ain’t gonna save all my breath. I grew up in some
pretty high hills. When I was just a kit, I did everything a
young'n could do in them hills. I hiked, climbed, fished,
parasailed, spelunked caves, trapped critters, rode mountain bikes
and lots more. You just try to name it and I can just about Damall
garantee I done it. And I loved evry minute of it. I could get all
squidged up inside just thinking bout how good and easy, real easy,
those times were. But, Noby, you know what? They weren’t nothin
compared to flyin higher and higher as the sun sets, or flappin
alongside a big old turkey vulture or flyin blind through sunrise
fog where all you can see is a ghostly rosy glow way far away.