Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (13 page)

Mal saw her in his father’s hardware store one day and claims he was instantly smitten. He certainly gave her a lot of attention, inviting her out to football games and to parties with his friends. He seemed to know everyone and she had to admit it made her feel glamorous, zooming around in Mal’s speedboat and his cherry-red Corvette. Mal had big plans. He was always going somewhere fast, with the wind blowing through his already thinning hair. She found she liked all that high-flown energy. And even more, she liked that Mal made her parents crazy. “He’s an atheist,” they said. “A materialist. All he cares about is money.” She actually thought those were some of Mal’s finer traits. Soon, they were going steady.

She gave herself to him for the first time on prom night, in the backseat of Mal’s new airplane. Nineteen years old and he was already a full-fledged pilot, instrument-rated. His father, Milt, had rewarded Mal for that accomplishment by buying him the Cessna. It was a full moon night when Mal drove her out to the airport, the sky still a dazzling peacock blue down along the horizon. He told her they would make a grand entrance at the prom later, but first, he had a surprise for her.

She didn’t know what to expect as she sat there in the Corvette watching Mal push open the heavy doors to Hangar Number 5. Was he just going to show it to her, or did he actually expect her to go for a ride with him? She’d never flown in a small plane before, and she certainly didn’t think it was safe to do so at night. The Cessna, in its dark cave, reminded her of the pterodactyls she’d seen in one of those hokey old dinosaur movies–
Journey to the Center of the Earth,
or
King Kong
maybe. She didn’t want to have anything to do with it. But Mal had already run through the pre-flight check and was motioning for her to climb into the cockpit, so he could start the prop. She didn’t want him to know she was scared of flying with him, so she climbed into the co-pilot’s seat, found the safety belts, and strapped herself in tight.

The plane started up with a shuddering roar.
My god, it was noisy!
It seemed even noisier because the night had been so quiet just moments before (tree frogs chirping down near the pond skirting the airport; a freight train rumbling in the distance, blowing its mournful horn). Now the Cessna’s engine was shattering the peace in a way that almost seemed obscene–and certainly should have been illegal. She started to get a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as Mal taxied toward the runway. She wondered,
Does he really know how to fly this thing, or is he just showing off?

The runway lights–blue and amber–formed two parallel lines that seemed to converge in the distance as Mal positioned the plane at the start of the airstrip. He revved the Cessna’s engine like a drag racer and then they were off. Cynthia clenched the door handle in her fist. The whole airplane felt as flimsy as a kite, and it was gathering speed at a terrifying rate. She was sure it would shake apart before they got to the end of the runway. But instead they zoomed up, up, and away. She felt an electric jangling in the soles of her feet, spasms of weakness in her knees and legs. A sudden vertigo overtook her as the airplane climbed into the night.

Oh my God,
she thought
, how will we ever get back down?

Mal looked at her and yelled something like, “Isn’t this great?” She gave him a curt nod. Saliva was flooding her mouth and she was afraid that if she answered him she would vomit. They were already so high above everything. What if the engine stopped? What if they ran out of gas, or some crucial part fell off? They’d be killed for certain. Her parents had an old Buick V-8 that had a habit of quitting and leaving them stranded by the side of the road. Why should an airplane be any different–especially a chintzy one like this, so cheap-looking compared to the jets at real airports? Why would anyone take such risks? She decided, then and there, that Mal must be insane.

That last thought was confirmed when Mal yelled: “Let’s go crash the prom! Want to?”

For a moment she thought Mal intended to crash the Cessna into her high school prom as an act of pure terrorism, some sort of kamikaze stunt provoked by morbid teen feelings. Then she realized he was using the word “crash” in its slangy sense, as in, “to intrude on a party without being invited.” But by then it was too late and she’d already had a vision of youthful carnage on a massive scale: bloody rented tuxes, limbless torsos in gaudy crinoline and satin, decapitated heads in the spiked punchbowl….

Mal tilted the Cessna’s wings at a sickening angle, making her feel like she might tumble right out of her seat and go swooning into the black sky outside the flimsy door. He pointed his finger down at the lights in her earthward-leaning side window and told her Kingsburg was directly below them. She never would have recognized it on her own. Black expanses of farmland were broken up by tiny glowing arteries of freeways and yellow pinpricked clusters that were supposed to be streetlights in a small town. It all looked alien and menacing. They started to descend, following a silvery trail through the shadowed landscape–moonlight reflecting on the Kings River. Soon they were low enough that she could make out the trees crowding the river’s banks. The prom was taking place at the locally-famous Kings River Gun Club, a white-painted cinderblock building with tall windows facing the river, where members brought their families to enjoy barbecues, skeet-shooting, water-skiing, and general redneck fun. Cynthia saw lights up ahead and knew it was the Gun Club even before Mal put the plane into a dive and shouted, “We’re gonna buzz those suckers! Here we go, baby! Hang on!”

Mal let out a banshee whoop as the Cessna practically skimmed along the river right in front of the lit-up Gun Club building. Cynthia could see the faces inside turning to look out the windows.
These are my last moments on earth,
she thought. She hoped no one could see the tight-lipped grimace of pure terror on her face. She had unconsciously placed her hand on Mal’s thigh and now she had a viselike grip on his leg.
We’re going to crash
was all she could think. When a bridge suddenly loomed up in front of the Cessna’s windshield, she started to scream.

Then, in an instant, they were heading back up toward the stars again. Mal had pulled back on the little steering wheel that stuck straight out from the dashboard and now they were rising in a steep climb. She let go of Mal’s leg and put her hand on her throat to check her pulse. It was racing so fast that she couldn’t count the individual beats. Up and up they went, higher than they’d ever gone before. They passed through a low drifting cloudbank and everything above and below them was obscured in swirling gray fog.
What if we run into something in here?
Cynthia thought.
A bird, a mountain, another plane?
She felt like she was suffocating. After several long minutes they were above it, out in the open, and for the first time she was struck by how beautiful flying at night could be. Just beneath them the cloudbank was all lit up, seemingly from within, like a river of ghostly sheep. The stars were so much brighter up there, brighter than she’d ever seen them. The clouds were all below them now. It was clear viewing into deepest space in every direction she could see. They were at 10,000 feet and still climbing.

The Cessna’s engine seemed quieter up in that thin air. Cynthia began to calm down. In fact, she started feeling cheerful, almost giddy. Mal pointed toward the horizon out her side window. “Look! Those are noctilucent clouds!” he shouted. “You’ll never see them from the ground! They’re actually ice-coated extraterrestrial dust particles!” Cynthia followed where Mal’s finger was pointing. She saw a shimmering, milky-white band crossing the midnight sky with a touch of gold along its bottom edges. It made her think of a translucent membrane unfurled from some gigantic luminous jellyfish dwelling in the sea’s darkest depths. As she watched, the clouds gradually faded and dissolved into ethereal mist. It was one of the most gorgeous things she’d ever seen.

Cynthia put her hand on Mal’s big arm and gave him a caress. “I love it up here!” she said–and to her own surprise she meant it. She was feeling euphoric, in love with the whole world all at once. Mal responded to her good mood by becoming loquacious. He jokingly proposed marriage and offered to make her a member of the Mile-High Club (she refused to unzip his pants and suck him off–as he was hoping–but to show what a good sport she was, she playfully patted his crotch). He flattered her by telling her she could become a model or an actress. He wasn’t kidding about that marriage business, either, he decided. He spent quite some time telling her how he’d make a fine provider.

Then Mal drifted onto other topics. He kept up a steady stream of patter that sounded increasingly deranged. He told her that aliens really
did
crash their spaceship in Roswell, New Mexico. They were carrying plans for an anti-gravitation device along with a sort of vacuum cleaner that could suck up all the bad feelings of the human race. He claimed he was a reincarnated Chinaman, a samurai warrior with a bad prostate whose likeness was carved in life-sized terra cotta and buried on the outskirts of Xi’an in the tomb of the Emperor Qin Shihuang. He explained to her that a secret cult of bankers, media barons, and lumber merchants ruled the world. They practiced the black arts and brainwashed their own children into becoming psychics and assassins. The Rothschilds and the Vanderbilts were tied up in it somehow, but he couldn’t say more. Not that she wanted him to, anyway. By then she was off in her own little world, singing Barbra Streisand tunes.

“People who need people are the luckiest people in the world…”
Etc.

It was only later that Cynthia found out she and Mal had been suffering from high-altitude sickness–the lack of oxygen up there was making them both a little crazy. They were traveling at 15,000 feet above sea level. They could have passed out from hypoxia and died before they even hit the ground.

Fortunately, just as Mal was explaining the several strange coincidences between John F. Kennedy’s assassination and Lincoln’s (“And don’t you go believing that Lone Gunman Theory for a second…”), he leaned forward on the Cessna’s steering wheel and the plane began a descent toward lower altitudes.

By that time, Cynthia was in a giddy stupor, but Mal still had enough of his wits left about him to find the Selma airport and land the plane with hardly a bounce. Once they had taxied off the runway and pulled to a stop near the Corvette still parked in front of the hangar, Cynthia felt such an outpouring of pure, naked lust for Mal–induced by his piloting prowess
(“My hero!”) –
that instead of getting out of the plane, she climbed into the backseat and beckoned Mal to follow her.

It was there that Cynthia allowed Mal deflower her, right on the ox-blood vinyl seats with their invigorating stench of new plastic. She was still feeling the symptoms–akin to drunkenness–of hypoxia, and she’d never felt so horny in her entire life. She was somewhat taken aback to discover that Mal had condoms in the Cessna’s glovebox–as if he’d been expecting that sort of reaction from her all along–but she decided not to make a fuss. After some serious French kissing and the liberation of her breasts from the prison of her underwire bra (nipples erect like tiny pink top hats), she helped Mal unbuckle his pants. She was taken aback a second time when she saw the length and girth of his member. It was as thick as a Campbell’s soup can and nearly twice as long.
There’s no way I’ll ever fit that monster inside me
, she thought, but then she decided to give it a shot. She was big and rubbery down there, after all (she’d once halfway shoehorned a travel-sized bottle of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo in there, as an experiment, and there had been follow-up experiments with a medium-sized zucchini and a ketchup bottle, as well). Mal girded himself with two Trojans and lay sideways on the backseat as she lowered herself on top of him. It was an uncomfortable fit, but she was dripping with her own lubrication, and after a little gentle rocking she had him buried in her to the hilt.

“Wow, this is
swell!”
said Mal.

“Sock it to me, Big Boy!”
she cried, heaving up and down on her lewd haunches.
“Put the wood to me, Mal! Fuck me silly!”

Okay, so those probably weren’t the exact words
, thinks Cynthia, still on her side in bed. That first time in the cockpit with Mal remained, however, the sexual high point of her life. Just thinking about it again has made her wet. She’d climaxed at least half a dozen times in that crappy little airplane (the condoms broke, or just plain disintegrated from all the heat and friction. A similar condom mishap resulted in Gordon’s conception a few months later, to their mutual chagrin). She’s never had multiple orgasms like that since. There must have been more to it than just Mal’s big dingus, which, frankly, can sometimes be a chore (if she’s not extremely well-lubricated–or high on painkillers–it can hurt like hell). Maybe it was the hypoxia that made everything feel so sexy. Now kissing Mal has all the appeal of licking the inside of the butcher’s paper off an old, raw steak. And every time she lets him do it to her, she stays outside the experience, watching without passion as he moans and groans to his own private pornography–slamming away at her like industrial machinery made flesh.

Oh, what the heck….
Life has other consolations besides orgasms–although at the moment she can’t think of any.
Children?
No way.
Married life?
Not by a long shot.
Her own credit cards?
Well,
maybe
….

“Are you up for a little action tonight?” murmurs Mal, surprising her with a finger sliding deep into the slick of her vagina. His big knuckle glides in so effortlessly that it feels as if its been soaped.

“I guess we could try,” Cynthia says demurely.

“It doesn’t feel like we’ll be needing the K-Y this time…” says Mal, rolling over toward her. For the past several years, bored with foreplay, Cynthia has found that the only way she can get her husband’s monster dong inside her is to slather it with K-Y Jelly first. They’ve gone through buckets of the slimy stuff. She’d been thinking it had turned her off to sex permanently–but tonight things seem different.