Flight (49 page)

“What are you doing?”

“Seein if there’s a good place to go
fishin….” He inspects the entire perimeter of the door looking for
a vulnerability. After a minute he returns the intense light to
study a spot on the rusted edge of the door about thirty
centimeters above the door handle. “…and I think I mighta found
one. Here, boy, hold this.”

While Joe trains the narrow beam of halogen,
the old man uses his knife to scrape away at the scabby section of
steel. When he is satisfied with the slight gap he has made, he
pulls three meters of line off his fishing reel and ties the ends
together. He hands his knife to Joe.

“Wedge it in the crack, but, by God, Noby, if
you break the tip off my most favorite knife, you’ll find
whatever’s left stuck deep in yore gizzard. Are we clear, son?”

Joe grins, “I’m just glad we’re good friends
and you’ve cut me a break.”

“That could change, little un, that could
change.”

While Joe carefully pushes on the handle of
the knife to make the opening between door and frame as wide as
possible, a kneeling Bob Tom begins threading a loop of fishing
line into the crack. When half of the fishing line is through to
the other side, he hums as he works the line down toward the
handle.

Suddenly, Bob Tom’s hands stop. He whispers,
“I do believe I’ve got a nibble.”

The river-man leans back on his heels as he
slowly withdraws the line. He shows Joe the two ends where the loop
of line has been cut.

Joe leans his mouth close to where the knife
is still acting as a wedge.

“Yoli? Lavie La? My name’s Joe. I’m Prissi’s
friend. Please, let us in. My friend, Bob Tom and I, we want to
help. Jiffy said to come. We got past the zies to get here.”

A noise like the buzz of flies trapped behind
blinds comes through the crack.

“What? Oh. The zies. The ones that hit Jiffy
on the head and bit Prissi on the leg.”

As if the mention of the wounds is a magic
incantation, the door jerks open and Joe and Bob Tom are studied by
a dozen black-skinned, weapon-holding, rag-wearing women. An
out-sized woman, whom Joe assumes is Yoli, holding an out-sized
staff, which Joe assumes may be for more than walking, beckons the
two males to come through the doorway.

Joe responds immediately, but Bob Tom, who is
still on his knees, hesitates. Joe hears him whisper, “Damall, man,
show some heart.”

Slowly, the ancient fisherman gets to his
feet, but once he is upright, he stands frozen outside the doorway.
Not hearing any footsteps behind him, Joe turns back. Bob Tom waves
a hand dismissively, “You go on, boy. I think I’d better stand
guard.”

As Joe continues to stare at him quizzically,
Bob Tom stutters, “Just in case them crazy folk get an idea they
want to pay homage to prince and king.”

When Yoli takes a step forward to re-extend
her invitation, Bob Tom skips backward like a skittish horse. Joe
doesn’t even pretend to know what the old winger is up to. Instead,
he walks up to the large woman and asks if she is Yoli. After her
nod, Joe begins his story. Before he is twenty seconds into it,
Yoli interrupts to tell him to follow her. She and the woman turn
and walk to a narrow door at the far end of the room. Joe looks to
Bob Tom for a cue. When the river-man shrugs, Joe follows the
Africans.

Once the room is empty, a less tentative Bob
Tom comes through the doorway and lets it close behind him. After a
minute of slow breathing, Bob Tom ties one of the strands of
fishing line he is still holding into a loop, drops it over the
handle of the door and carefully pulls up. The line either slips
off the handle or slides all the way to where the post enters the
door more than a dozen times before it finally catches on a slight
burr on the ancient metal. When that happens, Bob Tom feels
vindicated that if he had fished long enough and with enough
patience, he would have been able to open the door.

After the fishing, there is little to do. The
old man tries to stay calm, but the thought of somehow being
trapped in the room with the women he has just seen keeps returning
to him. The notion of being trapped underground with them tugs at
him like briers in a feverish dream. There is little Bob Tom
fears—not precipitous heights, not stormy flights, nor surging
water, nor winter’s sharp fingers digging through his campsite
bedding. Not bear, nor violent men. But a group of women, of single
purpose, a hydra form of female, has come to spawn a mindless
terror in him that can’t be calmed. When that re-awakened motion
overwhelms him, Bob Tom bolts from the empty room to the safety of
the subway’s tunnel’s dank gloom. He stands at the rail, drenched
in shame. His hands grasp the handrail and twist and turn on the
pipe so that flurries of brown and orange flakes drift through the
air.

The old man’s body is tired. Beyond tired. He
can feel that his courage is fast slipping away. He’s running out
of tricks. His pretence to youth and vigor has cost him dearly. He
thinks that Joe is no more than a slight flutter of the curtain
away from seeing the shabby truth behind. He, who has courted
danger like a cow-eyed swain, knows that however true those old
acts were, now, they are no more than artifice and dream. His sigh
echoes in the tunnel. He has disappointed himself, but he knows
that regardless of how badly he feels, that feeling’s sound would
be nothing compared with what would wail from him if Blesonus were
to learn of his weakness and failure. He knows that to go further
is to fail. He is just too old for heroics. But, to quit is to fail
completely. He can’t accept that. He wants and needs a final trick
even as he wishes he could be free of the quest. He want and needs
Joe’s admiration and adulation even as he wishes he were sitting on
a fallen log, his back against the smooth warm bark of a birch tree
with his fishing line dancing along the surface of a spring swollen
pool.

The palms of Bob Tom’s hands are sore and
caked in rust when Joe half-opens the door. As the old man brushes
his palms against his pants, Joe says goodbye to Yoli and her
friends. While Joe is busy, Bob Tom clears his face of any evidence
of what his heart still feels.

Joe grins to the old man as he waves a piece
of paper.

“I’ve got it. We’ve got it…I think. Here.
Look.”

“Well, Noby, this is mighty pore light for
reading. Just tell me what it says.”

Joe reads the numbers Prissi had given to
Yoli, the same numbers Prissi herself had found in Al Burgey’s
freezer.

“What do you think? It has to be the
co-ordinates for where she’s gone. Don’t you think? What else can
it be?”

“I don’t know, son. Let’s get out of this
hellhole and sit in the sun for a spell and parse and ponder
it.”

The climb out is not much easier than their
descent, but it is safer. Yoli has given Joe directions to another
egress that brings them to the surface without contact with the
zies. However, after Joe climbs out of the fireplace, steps through
a blizzard of blue jay feathers and looks out the window, he
realizes that whatever happens next is going to be easier for Bob
Tom than himself since the street below is underwater. When Joe
turns back to tell Bob Tom about the water, he can hear the old man
wheeze and groan as he clambers up the ladder. As Joe sits by the
entrance waiting for his friend and listening to his efforts, he
worries about the toll their search is taking on the ancient
riverman.

When Bob Tom approaches the light at the top
of the ladder, he stops so that he can catch his breath. He hangs
on with one hand and uses the sleeve of his shirt to wipe the
rivulets of sweat from his face. After he feels that he has
recovered enough to be presentable, he finishes his climb. He
emerges from the chimney with a happier smile on his face than is
present in his eyes.

“Nothing better than a little exercise, huh,
Noby? Keeps us fit.”

Joe shakes his head, “I don’t like being
underground. I didn’t like it with the Greenlanders and I didn’t
like it down there. How did you live inside that mountain for
years?”

Bob Tom’s smile gets pinched off, “It warn’t
nothin. I figure it’s just like livin in a basement, only a little
deeper.”

To change topics, Bob Tom says, “Tell me
about that paper. Iffen it’s co-ordinates, where does it put her?
Did you check?”

“No, I wanted to wait for you.”

“Mighty gracious. Well, plug em in and see
what comes up.”

Joe keys the mypod. When the map fills the
screen, he studies it for a minute, but when he doesn’t recognize
any landmarks, he reverses the zoom. He has to scale it down twice
before Bob Tom, who is leaning over his shoulder, exclaims,
“Damall, Noby, it’s all the way out on Long Island. That ain’t
gonna be much fun.”

“Bob Tom, it can’t be as far as we’ve already
come, can it?”

“No, son, it ain’t as far, but if memory
serves, all you had to do to get where we are is sit on your butt
and let me and them damfool pirates and the mighty Hudson carry you
along. Getting to where you think we orta be getting next is gonna
be just a tad more difficult. At least for you. If you don’t mind,
boy, bob Tom Damall’s gonna take a wee minute and be wistful.”

“What about?”

“About how my life woulda been a site easier
lately iffen you’d a gotten yourself a pair of wings instead of a
poor attitude.”

Joe has a rejoinder on the tip of his tongue,
but he restrains himself as he tries to imagine what will be
required for him to get to the eastern end of Long Island. Bob Tom
can fly—even if he has to make frequent stops. But, what Joe
doesn’t have an easy answer for is how he is going to go where he
wants to be. From what he has seen on the mypod, where Prissi has
gone is beyond the Pale. He won’t be catching a cab. From what he
knows, that area is nothing but impenetrable growth and disease.
But if that is where Prissi is, he has no doubt that is where they
have to go.

“Let’s rent a car and stop when we can’t go
any further.”

“What are we gonna do with a dang car? I
cain’t drive. Can you?’

Joe considers telling the truth, but decides
that that makes little sense.

“Sure. I can drive.”

“You own yourself a license?”

“No. I’m too young.”

“Well, I don’t either. Once I got my wings, I
never felt the need. Without a license, no one will rent us a car.
I’m not sure, even with your new looks, that you should be in a
public place much, so busses are out.

“I’m thinking this here may be the end of the
road for us, Noby. At least, for the two of us. I’m thinking you
orta go home, Noby. See your folks. You done what you could do.
There ain’t nothing more for you to do. I can go off my own and do
a little more lookin around while you go git yore wings.”

“Before we decide that, can we just get out
of here?”

“And how you wanna do that? Me pullin you
again?”

Joe barely keeps his anger under control. He
doesn’t like feeling helpless, but he finds he is having a harder
time taking Bob Tom’s help.

“No. That water’s not much more than a meter
deep. I can slog through it. You go ahead. I’ll meet you on the
levee.”

Forty minutes later, as Bob Tom pulls the
soaking Joe from the water, they begin to argue. Their disagreement
over what to do continues as they walk north on the levee wall and
make their way onto the Queensboro Bridge. After a long, drawn-out
debate, a discussion that is loud enough to draw the attention of
the occasional passersby as they walk across the ancient rickety
span, Joe still refuses to turn back. When they finally get to the
Queens side of the river, Bob Tom’s chest is heaving from his
exertions. Joe can’t tell if his friend is serious or just doing
more acting when he snarls, “Now, what? We’re gonna go somewhere
where no one’s gonna take us? That don’t mean much to me cuz I can
fly. But it certainly puts a cramp on what you can do. Now, there’s
a decision to be made. She’s yore friend, but the way you are, yore
bout as helpful as a hound dog in a hurricane. Caint be helped. We
done what we could, but now it ain’t we no moe, it’s me. That
little un needs help and I mean to help her. And I cain’t help her
if I got someone helpless holdin me back.”

Joe starts to argue, but Bob Tom ignores him
as he puts his rod in his pak.

“Bye, Noby. You larned a lot these last days,
but you gots lot more to larn. I hope to see you around the river
sometime.”

Before Joe can say anything, Bob Tom flicks a
wave of his hand and he is in the air, beating his wings eastward.
Joe is shocked. He can’t believe Bob Tom has just left him. The
stunned boy watches the old man until he is no more than a dark dot
on the horizon; however before the dot becomes too small to see, it
becomes blurry. Joe takes a deep breath and holds it.

The teener’s companion has been gone less
than five minutes, but Joe’s chest aches at the loss…and at how
lost he himself feels.

Flagging and Flogging

Bob Tom’s plan is to fly east until he is out
of sight before veering north and west. He’ll fly over the northern
end of Manhattan to the Hudson. His figures he’ll save his
dwindling strength by hitchhiking a ride back to Albany on a tug.
After that, he should be rested enough that it won’t be a problem
to make his way home.

As the old man slowly flaps his wings, he
thinks of all the things that will bring him comfort. Hot coal
coffee, charred meat, a rising moon breaking through the river’s
fog, the skirrying sound of his feet in winter dried weeds. Home
and habit.

Bob Tom sighs, but, suddenly, a bellow, a mix
of anger and anguish, explodes from his lungs.

He’s choking on his lie. Home won’t be home,
and there will be no comfort found if he doesn’t finish what he has
started. That thought, which he knows to be true, adds an
immeasurable weight to the old man’s wings. In the middle of the
giant blue bowl of sky, Bob Tom Damall feels as trapped as a mink
in one of his snares. He cries out a second time. He cants his
wings and edges north. Seconds later he is back on an easterly
heading. As his indecision grows, so does the weight of his wings.
The old man wastes energy in the open sky as he slaloms back and
forth between the dangerous demands of Scylla and Charybdis.