Flight (51 page)

As Bob Tom continues east along the
Connecticut coast and the waters of Long Island Sound, he increases
his altitude. He finally stops climbing at five hundred meters. A
half century ago he could fly long distances at a thousand meters.
With his skinwings, that altitude gave him the longest distance at
the greatest economy of energy. Now, the effort to get to half that
height far exceeds the energy savings once he has arrived. His
wings have changed shape as he has aged, the same as his legs and
hands, and that alteration in the shape of the leathery air foil
has had big consequences in the efficiency with which way he can
fly.

The reasons Bob Tom has flown so much higher
than he has in years are two-fold—knowledge and insurance. He wants
to study the far-off Long Island shoreline so that he can pick the
closest point as a destination. And, he wants to give himself as
much time as possible when things go wrong—which he knows will
happen. From higher in the air, he can see farther and have a
better chance of spotting a boat to land on when his wings, or
will, fail. However, despite any precautions he may take, deep in
his bones, the old man knows that this is going to be a one-way
flight. He thinks how Voltaire was right when he had old Dr.
Pangloss stay home and tend his garden. That he would like to do,
but the part of him he has spent years creating won’t let him.

An hour later, far ahead off to his right,
Bob Tom sees what he realizes must be Fisher Island. His decides to
fly to the island and rest before he continues on to Long
Island.

For more than a century Fisher’s had been a
summer home and refuge for those too rich or well-bred to go to
Martha’s Vineyard. When the world’s waters began to rise, many of
those Fisher families lost their homes. Much like the victorious
but spent British after World War Two who, with a certain defeated
grace, had allowed their colonies to go, so, too, had the denizens
of Fishers mostly eschewed any rear-guard action. Instead of
fighting for what once was a sanctuary, a preserve of wealth, they
had accepted their losses to a changed world.

As Bob Tom approaches the sanctuary, where he
once had spent an uncomfortable weekend at the invitation of a
fourth generation Yale legacy undergraduate, he is surprised at
just how small the island has become. Few remaining houses. No
landing strip that he can see. He wonders if there are summer
nights now where there is no fourth for bridge.

By the time he crosses onto the island, the
old winger is flying at fifty meters. It seems to him to be much
less green that his memories. The land is mostly grays and browns
except for what he sees are the bleached bones of thousands upon
thousands of deer skeletons. As he comes over a small ridge, Bob
Tom looks down on a herd of emaciated deer drinking from Buckland
Pond. It hits the old man how a life without enemies can spell
death. Other than the last years with Rholealy, his enemies have
been confined to bear and briers. He understands how the lack of
struggle has weakened him.

Bob Tom flies past the herd until he comes to
a rocky spine where he lands. He stays twenty minutes catching his
breath and fighting off a deprezzion which is enveloping him like
dense fog.

The second leg of his flight across Long
Island Sound, despite failing light and stiff winds blowing out of
the southwest, goes smoothly. When he lands on the desolate coast
of Long Island’s north shore, he is tired, but not spent. His
reckoning tells him that he has almost another thirty kilometers to
fly. With dusk descending and anticipating an expanse of scrub
broken only by ponds, streams and swamps, Bob Tom decides that it
makes sense for him to spend the night on the beach.

The old man walks the wrack line looking for
an indentation in the sand which will provide some shelter. After
he finds one that is suitable, he collects sticks and wedges them
into the ground to make a frame over which he drapes dried sea
grass and ribbons of bleached kelp.

Although it takes more time than he normally
would allocate for so temporary a shelter, the old man doesn’t
begrudge himself his efforts. It passes the time and, to a small
extent, keeps his thoughts at bay. When his home is ready, the
thoughts return.

He is dying. He accepts that. That knowledge
is not news. What is different is the plaintive acquiescence. That
acceptance is new. And that is wrong. His origins are in a place
where living demands a tenacious grip. For more than eighty years
he has known, and accepted that. He has held tight with an
acrobat’s hands, hard-callused and sinewy-muscled hands. Until
now.

The old man waves his hands at the
encroaching dark to disperse his thoughts. He gathers driftwood,
hums, sings, lights his fire and feels a long lost joy at watching
driftwood flames colored bright by the ocean’s minerals. When his
first wood begins to die, he gathers more and more again until his
profligate flames light the shore around him and add a golden tint
to the pair of eyes watching him through dense scrub.

Finally, as the moon begins its fall and his
sadness has spent itself, the old man drifts into sleep. As the
rasp and hack of the winger’s breathing breaks across the sibilance
of waves lapping on sand, his watcher, Mortos, builds his own
gossamer dreams.

Bob Tom’s body wakes refreshed, but his soul
remains fatigued. While he chews his leathery breakfast, he paces
the shore. He feels like an ancient agitated Agamemnon girding for
war.

It is as he nears a thustle of rose hips that
Bob Tom sees the hoof prints. No one hunts for decades without
being watched himself, but Damall’s spirits sink even lower when he
realizes that he has been surveyed from less than twenty meters
from where he has supped, sung and slept. If he is going into
battle, which is what his nerve endings think, then it is not
reassuring to know that he is so ill-prepared. The old man tells
himself that if he had not built the crackling fire so high, and if
the waves had not been breaking on the shore, he would have heard
the horse.

Bob Tom is in the air flying over sinuous
streams and tussocks of scrub when he claps his hands in sudden
awareness. The horse had not been watching him. It, like Bob Tom,
himself, had been sleeping. No horse ever stands in place for any
length of time unless it is sleeping. As soon as the thought comes
to him, some of the riverman’s feelings of unease fall away as if
they were no more than a pinion torn free by a huffing wind.

Despite feeling lighter and being intrigued
with a landscape, which, if it were further south, he was sure
could be called bayou, Bob Tom pays close attention to where he
will land if something should go wrong. The ancient winger’s
shoulders ache from yesterday’s work and his heart is racing as he
nears the coordinates the Africans had given to Joe. It comes to
him that he has assumed that his destination would be something
recognizable, such as an abandoned building, dock or a meadow. But,
as far as he can see, there is nothing but a uniform of green
decorated with shiny ribbons and medals of water. The old man
circles twice over his destination without seeing a place to land.
As he comes around a third time, he thinks that the African women
have deceived Joe and himself.

Why wouldn’t they? Why would they trust two
males? Two strangers? The Africans would have thought that if the
girl really needed help, then she would have contacted them
herself.

Bob Tom realizes that he and Joe have been
sent on a wild goose chase. His anger at being deceived only lasts
a moment. Almost immediately he is relieved. He is not going into
battle today. He has tried to help the girl. He has done what he
could. No longer is he duty bound. He can fly home to his simple
life. He can see Blesonus and need not feel shame.

Something about the sleeping horse has
continued to bother Bob Tom as he flies. It is not until he has
crimped his wings so that he can land on a small weedy spur of land
jutting into a five meter wide stream that it comes to him that the
horse might have stayed still, not because it was asleep, but
because a rider had held it still. A rider on horseback is
something the old man hasn’t seen in years. Something about a
watcher on horseback, something he thinks may tie into hobbit
travels through Middle-earth, makes Bob Tom hold his breath as he
tries to look through the thick foliage which surrounds him. Too
tired to fly, too hinky to stay on the small outcropping, Bob Tom
carefully slides down the two meter embankment and begins walking
down the ankle deep clear water of the stream. He hasn’t walked
more than a half-klik when something flies out of the woods above
him and drops over his head. Before he understands what has
happened, a second lasso shooting out from the other side of the
bank secures him.

At first, the ancient riverman struggles to
free himself, but those efforts cause the tips of his wings to get
wet. After a few seconds, the fatalistic riverman calms himself and
waits for his captors to show themselves.

Merrily, We Roll Along

Joe has to ask a half-dozen people walking
the streets of Queens before he gets the answer he is looking for.
That answer, a quick stop at an ATM, and a brisk half-hour walk
bring him to The Razr’s Edge. Joe takes his time looking at the
solar-powered scooters. His initial inclination, one guided by the
fact that he is a fifteen-year old boy, is to buy the thermest
scooter in the store, a silver and black SPD-Z, but, then, a newly
wakened maturity, something Joe is willing to attribute to Bob Tom,
takes over. He goes to the FAQ screen and begins to key in his
questions.

Joe has narrowed his choice down to an
E-RAZ-R, a slow, heavy, solidly built scooter with an extra power
pak that is capable of going forty kilos miles on a single charge,
when a door at the back of the shop explodes open and a
bandy-legged gnomish man scuttles past the secu-cams toward
Joe.

“Watcha bizness?”

It takes Joe a minute to decrypt the
powerfully built man’s question.

Joe outlines his needs—sturdy, dependable,
capable of going long distances. As Joe explains what he is looking
for, the little man begins to shake his head, and, then, begins
muttering, “No, no.” Finally, like a compressed spring suddenly
released, the man’s short, thick arms fly up past his head and he
yells, “Pizza gabbage. No, no, not this crap. No. You wait. You
don’t move. You hear? Don’t move.”

After Joe nods, the little man, looking like
a fire hydrant on wheels, whirs around and scoots back through the
door from which he had emerged. Joe wonders what it is about him
that draws loony old men. When he turns back to the E-RAZ-R, he
hears a muffled voice through the door, “He moved. Goddamighty, I
say ‘don’t move’ and he moves. This is my life?”

Something slams behind the wall, the door
bursts open and an ancient bicycle explodes through the opening
like a racehorse galloping from the starting gate. The bicycle,
with the gnome atop pedaling furiously, speeds toward Joe. Just as
the teener darts out of its path, the bicycle’s front wheel comes a
meter off the ground. Something that Joe thinks is meant to be a
battle cry rips the air, the wheel rises even higher until the
rider gracefully slides off the set and dismounts.

“Fuhged that pizza crap. Heahz the horse you
wanna ride. SchwinnerTakesAll-450. Fastah. Lightah. Strongah. No
crappy battry, just ya legs. Ya god legs, right? Ya not some kind a
teenah-weenah, ah ya?”

The gnome takes a second to look Joe
over.

“Whad ah ya? Lemme guess. Hockey, right? Am I
right?”

A surprised Joe nods.

“I thot so. Big legs, but no kinda stamina.
Am I right, am I wrong?”

Joe puffs up his chest at the little man’s
challenge.

“I can keep going.”

“Yeah, sure whadevah. If ya can keep goin
like ya say, den dis tings da ting to keep goin on. Garanteed ya
legs ah gonna crap out before dis ting does.”

When the bike first shot through the door,
Joe thought it was a ridiculous idea, but now he is
reconsidering.

“G’wan, kick da tires. Give it a spin.
Whadever. Yule see. Dis is for you. Journey ya god ahead, dis is
definitely for you.”

The gnome’s words freeze Joe. How can someone
he’s just met know where he is going?

“Whaddya think I’m stchtupid? You’re ona
island, right? Can’t go far north or south. West is the city wheahs
theahs no need for somethin like dis or a scoodah. So, whad’s dat
leave? Up, down, or east. Ya goin east and ya tole me ya need
somthin that can go pretty far. That leaves just one ting as far as
I can see, which bein such a short man mebbe you tink ain’t dat
far, but yore goin past da Pale. Ya runnin away. Fine, like I shoud
care. Get tickbit. Hey, it’s yore life. I go plenny of udder stuff
to keep me worried. Go, but go on dis bike and you’ll ged dere and
my conscience, which ain’t any bigger’n me, will be clear.”

Joe accepts the seller’s explanation, but he
worries that if the gnome has figured out his destination so
easily, then he may not be the only one. Joe decides that his best
defense is to get moving as quickly as possible.

“How much?”

“Dis museum piece? A STA-450? Da Mona Lisa of
two-wheelers? You can’t pay me whad it’s worth, and I can’t bring
myself to sell it ata loss.”

“How do you know I can’t pay you?”

“Cause runaways, even ones from very
well-known, very rich families, don’t carry dat kinda mool
around.”

Understanding that he is alone in a shop in
an area of New York that he doesn’t know, with a powerfully built
man who seems to know who he is, makes Joe wish for Bob Tom to come
striding through the door. However, rather than show fear, Joe
feigns anger as he turns toward the door, “If you weren’t going to
sell it, then why show it to me.”