Fight for Power (33 page)

What I didn't say was that while everything seemed mechanically fine with the Cessna, I just trusted my ultralight more. Or maybe I just trusted me in it more. I'd spent so much time behind the stick, I felt like I could read it better.

“It must be nice to be away from the neighborhood,” she said.

I nodded. “A lot of people are tense because of the trial.”

“They're our own people, but some of the comments have been disturbing to me,” she said. “It's like people are prepared to overlook what Brett and his crew did.”

“How does somebody overlook murdering innocent people?” I said.

She let out a big sigh. “Ultimately what they did is on my shoulders. Brett was under my command.”

“He was under nobody's command. Although it's funny—Herb feels like it's his responsibility, too.”

“There's probably enough blame to go around for both of us. For now, though, I think I need to go up to the gate and—”

“You need to get to sleep,” I said. “How long have you been up?”

“A while. It's just that we're a little short-shifted on the walls now that we need to guard our prisoners.”

I knew that was not only necessary and a drain, but uncomfortable for those who had to do it. Guarding against outside forces was one thing, but keeping our own as prisoners was different and difficult.

“Right now, just as people need to see you in the air, they need to see me around to feel more confident. They need to be reassured.”

“How reassured do you think they'd be if they saw you fall flat on your face? Why don't you go inside and sleep for at least a few hours?” I asked.

“I've got a committee meeting at eleven, and I have to get some breakfast first and—”

“And you can grab something and go to sleep. Rachel and Danny are with friends. The house is empty and quiet. I'll go and see Lori or spend some time with Todd. Go in and go to sleep, okay?”

“I'll lie down for a while,” she agreed. She gave me a hug and a kiss. “You need to take it easy yourself.”

“I sleep every night.” Although it was never that solid or that long a sleep, I still got a lot more than she did.

My mother went into the house, leaving me alone to finish my job. Just as I finished the last tie, a go-cart came roaring along the street and bounced up onto our driveway. I whirled around, afraid the loud engine would disturb my mother.

“Is the captain here?” the driver asked as he got off the little machine.

“She's unavailable right now. Is there something I can help with?”

“There's somebody up at the gate wanting to come in,” he said.

“There's always somebody at the gate wanting to come in, so why does she have to be involved?”

He shrugged. “I don't really know. They just sent me to get the captain. They said she'd want to deal with this one.”

“She's not able to deal with it. Tell whoever it is to go away. If that doesn't work, maybe I can find Herb.” Then I realized that Herb probably needed to be left alone as much as my mother did. “Wait, on second thought, I'll come up.”

“That might work. I better get back to the gate.”

“Can you do me a favor, please? Could you just push the go-cart until you get to the corner?”

He looked confused, but when I quickly explained he nodded.

“Thanks. I'll be up soon.”

He pushed the cart out of the driveway and all the way to the corner before he jumped in and cranked the engine. Even from a distance it was pretty loud.

I continued to secure the last of the ties, then stood up and started to walk to the gate in a foul mood. Everyone understood that nobody was to be let in, so why did they need my mother or Herb or even me? Why hadn't I just insisted that the guards turn the stranger away? Brett would have liked that. Get somebody else to do the dirty work at the walls while I flew high above everyone and everything.

As I walked along the streets I could see all the front lawns were filled with crops either still growing or getting ready to harvest. Food was going to be plentiful and whole teams had been assembled to pick, process, and preserve. Some of that had already happened. Tomatoes were being turned into sauce, cucumbers pickled, potatoes stored in cold cellars, and some vegetables canned to last us through the winter and into the next harvest.

Mr. Peterson was hopeful that the greenhouses could be used well into the fall and again in the early spring to produce second and third crops to supplement our food supplies. Even with that we still needed more. Sixteen hundred people required a lot of food.

The wall was up ahead. It was high and solid and reassuring. It was good to be on the inside. There were so many terrible, bad, tragic, and dangerous things going on out there. I walked up to the guards at the gate. I knew them all. They were good people, just trying to do the best they could, and I knew that turning away people was the hardest part of the job.

“Good morning,” I said. “Sorry my mother couldn't be here. I was told there's somebody who wants in.”

“He said he lives here.”

That was different. We had an obligation to let in people who lived here—the committee had agreed to that.

“We've had so many people falsely claiming to be from here that we couldn't just let him in,” the guard said. “We need somebody to talk to him to verify it and give approval.”

“I don't know if I can give approval, but I can talk to him. What did he tell you?”

The guard shook his head. “It was the last shift that talked to him, but they told us he didn't make a lot of sense, that he's in pretty bad shape. I was told he mentioned your mother.”

“My mother? What did he say?”

“Like I said, I didn't speak to him.”

“I'll go out and speak to him right now.”

“I'll have a couple of guards go with you,” he said.

“Does he seem dangerous?” I asked.

“He hasn't moved since we got here, and from what they told me the only danger was that he was going to fall over. The guy can't weigh much more than a buck twenty-five.”

“Does Howie know about this?”

“We sent word for him when we sent word down to your mother. He's occupied at the south gate and sent back a message he'd be here in an hour at the most. Do you want to wait?”

“I'll be okay. I have my gun,” I said, gesturing to the pistol in the holster on my shoulder. “But could you have the people on the wall keep an eye on me? Just open up the gate.”

“Yes, sir.”

I didn't get called “sir” often and it unnerved me, especially since the man saying it was older than me. The gate opened.

“He's just out there, sitting on the far curb,” the guard said. “He hasn't moved in the last thirty minutes. He might have fallen asleep.”

Or died, I thought, if he was in as bad a shape as they said. I hesitated at the opening. I bent down and pretended to check my shoelaces, but what I was really doing was putting my hand against my second gun—the one I now had almost permanently tucked into a holster on top of my sock on my right foot. Maybe I was just getting paranoid, but if Herb thought it was necessary to carry a second weapon, who was I to argue? It was almost an unspoken motto—better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.

I inched out of the gate and they closed it behind me—standard policy. That was unnerving. It was always dangerous or potentially dangerous. I looked around. There were a few people on the road, no vehicles, and nothing that could be seen as a threat. At first I didn't even see the man. He was sitting on the curb, curled up, arms folded over his head. His clothes were worn and ratty, and he only had one shoe, the second foot clad in a sock with rags wrapped around it.

I started to have my doubts. How wise was it for me to be out here, especially alone? He looked to be in desperate shape. I probably would have to tell him he couldn't come in, and couldn't predict how he was going to react. Desperate people with nothing to lose were the most dangerous. For a second I figured it wasn't too late—I could still turn around and ask for help. But really I couldn't. I knew that those people on the wall were watching me. And even though Brett was safely locked away I felt like he was watching me, judging me. Worse, in one way Brett was right. I didn't really know what it was like out here.

I stopped in front of the man. He didn't move, didn't seem to be aware that I was even there.

“Hello?” I tentatively called out. He coughed—a big guttural sound that came out of his chest. At least I knew he was alive.

“Hey, are you okay?”

He looked up and a smile seemed to crease his thick beard, and I saw my father's eyes looking back at me.

 

34

Days later, my father ran his hand along the side of the Cessna. “It's beautiful, really beautiful,” he said.

Beautiful was having him here.

“I don't think it's nearly as nice as
our
ultralight.”

He smiled—his big crooked smile clear now that the beard was gone. “It is
our
ultralight, isn't it?”

“I'm just sorry you couldn't be here when I took it up the first time.”

“I'm sorry, too…” He got that faraway look in his eyes, and I waited for him to continue. “I'm just so glad to be here.”

“We're all glad you're back,” my mother said. She wrapped an arm around him. She was beaming.

It had been five days from meeting that haggard bearded man to being here. The first two nights he'd spent up in the clinic, an IV in his arm and my mother at his side. He was sick, anemic, and had broken ribs that had only partially healed and a big scar on his side where he'd been slashed by a knife.

Dr. Morgan had assured us he was going to be fine with rest, food, and medicine, but my father still looked like death warmed over. There were times I hardly recognized him. He looked familiar, like an old uncle or a grandfather we'd never known, but not like our father. He had aged tremendously. It was as if the pounds had poured off and the years piled on.

Rachel and Danny had been ecstatic. They didn't even like to let him out of their sight and they clung to him as if they were afraid he'd disappear. I guess I understood that. They were both late for field duties today because they couldn't say goodbye. Finally he'd walked them to the field and then joined us up here.

“So can we take her up?” he asked.

I looked at my mother for approval. She nodded ever so slightly.

“We can go up. You and me,” I said.

*   *   *

The houses grew smaller beneath us.

“Perfect takeoff,” my father said.

That was a high compliment coming from him. If his being back was a dream come true, then being up in the air with him was beyond a dream. How many daydreams had I had about this? Besides the rare occasions on which I'd ridden up front on holidays when he was at the controls of his jet and the flights we'd shared in a Cessna, how many times had we shared the cockpit? This time of course there was one big, big difference—I was the one at the controls and he was beside me. I banked so that we could do a long, slow circle around the neighborhood. I didn't want to go far from our landing strip.

“She flies as nice as she looks,” my father said.

“Do you want to take the controls?”

“It's your flight, your plane.”

“Technically, it belongs to the whole neighborhood.”

“You're the captain, so when it's in the air it belongs to you. Besides, I want to just sit back and enjoy the view. I never thought I'd see the world again from the air.”

“There are lots of things we thought we'd never see again,” I said.

“Like me?” he asked. “Did you figure I was gone?”

“I knew you'd be back. I just didn't know how.”

“I wasn't that sure myself, and I didn't think it would be on foot.”

“It's just so amazing that you walked twelve hundred miles,” I said.

“It was so much farther than that. I couldn't travel in a straight line and had to avoid bigger centers. Cities are just, well … not a good place to be.”

“I had fantasies about coming to get you in the ultralight,” I said.

“There was no way for you to do that, no way for you to find me. Besides, they needed you here. I'm so proud of you, so amazed at how you've all pulled together and what you've been able to do,” he said.

“We've all worked together to make it happen.”

“But you've been a big part of it. You and your mother.”

“And Herb. I don't know where we'd be without him.”

“He's a good man fighting some demons. I guess now I know more of what that's like. You have no idea what it's like out … out there.”

He had only given us little glimpses of what he'd been through. I wasn't sure if it was because he couldn't bear to talk about it or didn't want to burden us with all of it. I know there were things I wasn't comfortable telling him—not now and maybe not forever.

“It's like the Garden of Eden in the neighborhood,” he said.

“Or the Garden of Eden Mills.”

“In some ways it's even more remarkable when you consider all that's going on all around us … all around everywhere.”

“If you ever want to talk about it—need to talk about it—I'm here.”

“I know you are. You've always been here. I'm just so sorry that I wasn't … so sorry that I let you down.” He started to cry.

I was surprised, but not. Tears had come often to him since he returned.

“You walked halfway across the country to get here. You did more than anybody would have expected. You coming back has given the whole neighborhood hope. Almost everybody has somebody who went missing or never came back. They'd just about given up hope of ever seeing them, and then you walk in our front gate and everybody believes that anything is possible.”