Flyers (9781481414449) (6 page)

It was pushing noon when I left. Pop and Ethan were involved in another of their big chess tournaments, and Pop was fighting him off with all he had. I remembered how it wasn't so long ago that Pop would have to sandbag so that Ethan could win once in a while, but now he couldn't even get away with any philosophizing or telling stories during their games because by the time he came out the other end of his spiel, Ethan would have put him away. Pop would raise a fuss whenever he lost, vowing a concentration unrivaled in Western civilization for their next match, but he didn't fool me. I knew how much he loved seeing Ethan win.

When I got to Bo's, he was in the living room watching an old
Flipper
episode on The Family Channel. You might think that a future-valedictorian type like Bo would avoid TV like the plague, or that he'd only watch PBS or Arts & Entertainment, but it wasn't the case. He loved all those old shows—including the cornball animal rescue things. He also loved the classic TV Westerns like
Bonanza
and
Gunsmoke
and
The Rifleman.
My personal favorite was
F Troop,
but that may have been the result of watching it one time with Pop and Mr. Whitecloud, who both practically fell off the couch laughing every time they showed the Hekawi
Indians and their stone-faced, wheeling-and-dealing chief.

Bo's little sister Erika was lying on the floor in front of him, drawing in her sketchbook and being Bo's footrest. When she saw me her face lit up and she slid out from under Bo's feet. “I'm making you something, Gabe,” she said, and reached for her drawing tablet. “See? It's you!” She sat up and handed it to me.

I took the thing in my hands and stared down at it. She didn't need to say it was me; it
was
me. It was incredible and it would have been incredible even if she hadn't been only nine years old. Erika didn't work in crayon like most kids her age, but did mostly pencil sketches and occasional watercolors. This was a pencil sketch, and she'd nailed me. She'd captured both my trademarks—the first being my hair, which except for the color (Pop's was gray and mine was brown) was exactly like Pop's, longish and wavy, bordering on wild (Pop called it free-spirited), and the second being my slightly cockeyed smile. I don't know where that came from, but I'd always had a way of smiling out of one side of my mouth, and it made me look a little like a wise guy, although I don't think I am particularly. Pop always told me I had the face of a choirboy who was thinking seriously of defecting, which was probably as good a way of putting it as any. I stared down at the picture, amazed. Being unable myself to draw much more than stick men with captions coming out of their mouths, it always gets me how, with just a few lines, some people can capture whatever it is that makes a person distinctive.
Especially
when the one doing the drawing is a kid.

“Wow,” I said, still studying the picture as I handed it back to her, “that's really great.” Which wasn't nearly enough to say how I really felt. I mean, I wasn't fighting
back a river of tears or anything like that, but I was touched. I really was. Just the thought of her pouring herself into that picture for my benefit got to me, and I would've hugged her if I were the hugging type.

Erika smiled and slid the sketchbook back in front of her. Bo's feet were draped over her shoulders now and sticking out on either side of her head. She didn't mind. She put that earnest look back on her face, the one that almost all little kids get when they're all wrapped up in something, and went back to drawing. I watched her for a minute, and then plopped down next to Bo on the couch just as the show broke for a commercial. “So how's Flipper doing today?” I asked him.

“Couldn't be better,” Bo said. “He sends his regards.”

“You know,” I said, stretching out and slumping into my usual couch posture, “the thing that gets me about
Flipper
is that the kids never get into any life-threatening situations unless they're in the water—or at least close enough to it so Flipper can point out the situation to a responsible adult. It doesn't make sense.”

Bo looked at me. “They're not allowed to go inland,” he said. “With their track record, it'd just be too risky.”

“What about school?” I asked. “Haircuts? The dentist?”

Bo shook his head. “Nope. Not unless they're within Flipper range.”

Erika had gone back to lying on the floor and was now working away with
two
sets of feet resting on her. She scrunched her head around and studied us as we discussed the behind-the-scenes rules governing life in Flipperville. She was never quite sure just how seriously she should take most of our conversations.

Right then the front door opened and Mr. and Mrs. Michaelson walked in. They were wearing their tennis things and carrying rackets so it was easy to see what they'd been up to. As they walked into the living room Flipper was jumping around in the water making that annoying noise he makes. Practically every
Flipper
episode ends the same way. Everybody stands around the water and one of them delivers a lame joke about how lucky they are to have Flipper around to save the day while he shows off by doing flips and tailstands. This never fails to crack up the whole cast.

“Another triumphant denouement?” Mrs. Michaelson said, being possibly the only human on the planet who would refer to the ending of a
Flipper
episode as a denouement.

Mr. and Mrs. Michaelson almost single-handedly proved the theory that opposites attract. Mr. M. wrote books for kids—kids Ethan's age and younger—sometimes novels, sometimes picture books, anything from mysteries to humor and fantasy, and he was even talking about trying his hand at science fiction. Go into any bookstore or library in the country and you're bound to see some titles by Lawrence Michaelson. I always considered him a genius in his own way, but there was no denying he was a kid at heart, and he loved those old TV shows as much as Bo did. Mrs. M., on the other hand, didn't even watch TV. A lot of people make a big deal out of slipping it into conversations how they don't watch TV, but Mrs. M. really
didn't
watch it—ever, except for documentaries or an occasional film (usually with subtitles). For her, the theme to
The Lone Ranger
was, and would always be, the “William Tell Overture.” That wasn't their only difference. She was formal; he was casual. She was meticulous; he was
absentminded. I could go on and on.

About the only thing the Michaelsons were in perfect sync on was their meditation program, which they did together twice a day. I say meditation
program
because they didn't just meditate. They were also flyers. The actual Transcendental Meditation term for what they were was “sidhas,” but “flyers” captured the flavor of the whole thing, and even TMers use the word. It meant they'd been trained in the yoga sutras of an ancient and revered mystic named Patanjali. I'm no expert on Patanjali himself, but I do know that the yoga sutras are what you might call a set of mental formulas for achieving supernormal functioning—one of the most dramatic of those functions being levitation. Bo had heard that there were at least a few people in India who were actually levitating, but pretty much everybody else (the other sidhas) spent their levitating time hopping around on foam rubber in the lotus position, working on developing their minds to the point where they'd eventually lift up and
stay
up. I'm not sure if I really believe that will ever happen, but I have to admit I kind of like the idea of it.

Because I grew up with it, I never found the notion of people flying all that bizarre. I'd always listened to Bo telling stories about Indian holy men doing this or that extraordinary thing, and I'd read
Autobiography of a Yogi
when I was twelve. That book is filled with stories of people doing miraculous things, including St. Joseph of Cupertino, who couldn't even take his turn serving the other monks at their meals because of his tendency to float to the ceiling, dishes and all, whenever he had a particularly happy thought. Then there was St. Teresa of Avila, who supposedly used to lift off regularly, whether she planned on it or not. I remember reading the whole
section on levitation to Ethan a few years ago, and of course he thought it was the greatest thing in the world, feeling the way he did about flying. He's always been crazy about anything that had to do with flying. When he was seven or eight, for his birthday Bo made him a painting he called
The Second Flight of Icarus,
which was based on the Brueghel painting
The Fall of Icarus.

In case you don't remember, Icarus and his father, Daedalus, tried to escape the island they'd been imprisoned on by making wings out of feathers and wax. The wings worked like a charm, and it looked as if they might pull it off until Icarus got a little carried away and flew too close to the sun, which unfortunately melted the wax on his wings and sent him into a major nosedive. In the Brueghel painting, all you see of Icarus are his legs sticking out of the water after taking the Nestea plunge. In the forefront of the painting is a plowman who's plodding along behind his horse and plow. His head is down, and you get the feeling he's never in his life lifted his eyes to the sky—the sky where Icarus has just been.

Bo's painting uses pretty much the same setting, but in his, Icarus is still high in the air, stretched full out and soaring for all he's worth, a look of joyful serenity on his face. And he doesn't have to worry about his wings melting, because he's not wearing any. In some way that I can't quite describe he has this quality of lightness about him, and you never for a minute think he's going to fall. Below him is the plowman, so solid and dense-looking I always had the sense that he was actually sinking into the ground. Even when you look at it close-up, it's hard to tell where the guy's boots leave off and the dirt begins. I always felt a little sad when I looked at that plowman. Something about the way he
was trudging along behind the horse reminded me of Mr. Lindstrom and the way he plodded around on his land. Ethan loved the painting, though, and since the day he got the thing, he's had it hanging on the wall at the foot of his bed where he can see it first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

“Remember when we were kids, hon?” Mr. M. said from the hall closet, where he was dumping the tennis rackets. “And all the Westerns we used to watch?”

“I remember when we were kids,” she said, reaching in and straightening up the rackets, “but I don't remember the Westerns.”

“My favorite was
Fury,”
Mr. M. continued wistfully. “My brothers and I watched that show every Saturday morning, no matter what. Remember
Fury,
hon?”

“I'm afraid I don't, dear.”

“Hon,”
he said, miming disbelief. “Don't toy with me here. You couldn't have gone all the way through your childhood without watching
Fury.”
He followed her over toward the stairs. “You remember—he was a horse, a shiny black horse, and he saved Joey every week.”

“Sorry, dear. You know that's not my forte.” She pronounced it “fort,” not “fortay,” which is how most people say it, and a little smugly too because it sounds foreign, not having a clue they're using the wrong word. I'd learned all those pronunciation subtleties from Mrs. M. over the years. You could say correct pronunciation was her forte.

“But how could you have missed
Fury?”
Mr. M. said, scratching his head in disbelief as she headed up the stairs. He shot a mischievous smile our way and then looked back up at her. “Do you suppose maybe they didn't get that show on your planet?” he asked her.

“That may explain it, dear,” we heard from the top of the stairs.

•   •   •

Bo had to work the pro shop starting at three, so he dropped me and my bicycle off at my house on the way. I figured since Ethan and Pop would most likely be done with their chess tournament by then, Ethan might want to go out for a hike. We were both big on hiking, or exploring anyway, and it seemed like a perfect afternoon for that kind of thing. Plus, Pop liked to get in a Sunday afternoon nap whenever he could, and I wanted to make sure that this week he could. I wondered if part of his problem in the last few weeks hadn't been just a matter of his not having enough time to call his own. I was well aware of the fact that for years Pop had worked hard at being father, mother, and breadwinner for us. After a while that kind of pressure has to take its toll.

As we headed out, Ethan said he hoped we could find the family of beavers that used to live on the swamp side of Blood Red Pond up until a couple of years ago. One day we'd gone over there to watch them, and they were gone. Mr. Lindstrom told us that was the way beavers were, that they'd stay in one spot for a while and chomp down all kinds of saplings for their lodge, and when they used up the ones they wanted, they moved on.

Ethan and I had spent a lot of time hiking along the many no-name streams that eventually feed into the Hudson River a few miles west of our place. We'd never found so much as a single beaver, but Ethan didn't seem to mind. He got a kick out of just being out there looking. Ethan was a lot like Bo in that regard, having that ability to just enjoy things without having to have
them come out exactly how he planned them. If I live long enough, I may get that way myself.

In keeping with tradition, we didn't find any beavers that day either, but we did find an old house foundation way out in the middle of the woods, and we explored around in there for a while. We wondered about the people who'd lived there—what they'd been like, what happened to them, and if we knew their grandchildren or great-grandchildren, that kind of thing. What got me was, I knew that the people who'd lived in this old place had been every bit as real as we were, and I tried to imagine our house like that, disintegrated down to the foundation, overrun by trees and vines and totally forgotten. It kind of gave me the creeps to think about it. I don't adjust that well to change—even if it hasn't happened yet.