The Four Corners Of The Sky (19 page)

Annie retied her shoes. “No, you were right. If we try to bring in the police, he’ll either disappear or shut down. If he’s got something to tell me about my mother, now’s when he’ll do it.”

Sam frowned. “Remember, you can’t believe everything he says.”

“Don’t warn me. I’m the one who lived with him. I’m the one he almost took twenty-five thousand dollars for.”

Sam sighed. “Oh, he just saw that in some old movie.” She patted Jack’s leather jacket, which Annie was now wearing. “What I mean is, you may not find out what you want about your mother.”

Annie kissed Sam’s cheek. “Then I won’t. Stop worrying.”

“When I’m dead, I’ll stop worrying.” Sam looked out at the rain. “So tell Jack from me: Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Like die?”

“Like die; don’t do anything stupid like that.” She tapped Annie’s nose and stepped away from her. “Either one of you.”

“I promise.” Annie climbed up onto the wing.

Lights on the runway glimmered in the hard rain. Clark stepped back to the little television screen to watch the red splotch on the Doppler moving toward them.

While Clark was looking at the weather report, Annie waved at Sam and climbed briskly into the cockpit. Sam watched the propeller turn over, catch, and the little plane head out onto the tarmac.

D. K. Destin’s growling voice crackled into Annie’s headphones when she reached the end of the ramp. “Tower One to
King of the Sky
. You got that big maple to clear. You see it?”

“Roger.”

“You always cut it too close, Annie. And it’s bigger’n it used to be. Wind gusting to 22 knots. Go ahead.”

“D. K., you don’t have a Tower One. You’re sitting in a pickup truck and you always say Tower One. Like there’s a Tower Two?”

“You crack me up, baby. Go ahead.”

She turned the nose of the rattling Warrior into the wind, pushed the throttle forward, squeezed her fingers around the plane’s yoke and headed it bucking in protest down the runway. “Don’t call me baby, you sexist child of your times. Departing runway 27.”

“Wind fifteen…eighteen, nineteen. Too much wind. Roger that? Taxi back? Taxi back. Roger that?”

“Negative. I’m good to go. Thank you. Go ahead.” The windsock flapped frenziedly. Annie had a breathtaking sensation—a kick of the heart—that she was making a stupid mistake and couldn’t even say why. She peered out across the airfield. There they stood, under the light, Sam and Clark, huddled in the hangar doorway, wet through, waving to her. Above them fluttered D. K.’s huge tattered banner with its hand-stitched black eagle flapping wildly as if fighting hard not to fall from the sky. She waved back at her aunt and uncle, although she knew they could barely see the plane, much less her face inside it.

The radio spluttered. “You listening to me, Annie? Go ahead.”

“Roger. Departing
VFR
westbound. Over.”

Why in God’s name had she insisted on going to St. Louis in the
King of the Sky
? Even if Rafael Rook (whoever he was) was right that Jack Peregrine was dying and that seeing Annie was his dying wish, why should Jack Peregrine get his dying wish? Clark and Sam, far more deserving, had had many wishes that had never come true. Why should she respond to a request for help, or unearned forgiveness, or whatever he wanted this plane for? Why, against all reason, including her own (she knew far better than Clark and Sam the danger in the sky tonight), had she felt (as undeniably as she felt hunger or cold) that whatever it took so she could have this talk with her father, she would do it? That if it took her flying a rattling thirty-one-year-old Piper Warrior into a storm that had caused the cancellation of all commercial flights, she could fly it. She would just head west-northwest, 290 degrees, and slip around the weather system, and fly herself to St. Louis. She would do it because, as the odd Rafael Rook had predicted, she could not take it or leave it.

D. K.’s voice rumbled. “Wind sixteen. Down to fourteen, ten. Okay, Annie, ain’t no mountain high enough. Go!”

Halfway down the runway, she eased slightly off the throttle, pressed her face against the dirty window, her eye on the windsock under the light on the hangar roof.

“Baby, what the fuck you doing? Left rudder, full throttle, full throttle.”

“D. K.! Stop mothering me!”

She watched the sock flick backwards, fall, quickly fill again, unfurling full and straight, pointing away. Oddly she suddenly remembered a rainy night, when she’d sat next to her father at the steering wheel of his red Mustang in the predawn quiet of some big city intersection. There was a soft rain so shiny black on the streets that they’d lost their boundaries; buildings shimmered in black pools broken by splashes of traffic. There was a fat man in the backseat of the car. Her father was betting this man that he could drive thirty blocks hitting green lights without ever having to stop for a red one.

In the Warrior now, all these years later, it was as if she could feel her father’s leaning over her, rubbing his face softly in her hair and whispering, “Darlin’, the readiness is all.” The car jumped forward. She could hear her laugh joining his as block after rainy block flew by, green, and green, and green.

Annie went fast to full throttle. Lightning pulsed in the clouds, silhouetting the wall of trees. She let the wind take the plane as if a giant had lifted it in the palm of a hand and moved her over the treetops. With a tip of one bright wing shaking leaves from the tallest maple, she left home behind her.

D. K. Destin’s voice crackled in her ears. “Mustang Annie, who do you owe?”

“Baby, it’s you…” Annie saw a far-off jet approaching from the southeast. “Hey, you got something coming in. Private jet? Over.”

“Fuck, yeah! Hot spot tonight. Nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide, go ahead.”

“Love you, D. K., over and out.”

S
hortly after the little Warrior soared away, a huge roaring noise suddenly shook the hangar at Destin Airworks and a white jet landed and taxied back to not far from where Sam and Clark were still standing beneath the overhang. The jet’s bold insignia
Hopper Inc.
glistened in the big yellow arc light. Brad Hopper leaped out of the cockpit in a crouch, tenting a briefcase over his head against the rain.

He ran up to Sam and Clark, said “Aw, shit!” and cupped his hands to look out at the black sky. “Was that Annie? Did she just fly out of here?”

Clark yelled above the noise of the still-humming jet. “I swear, we really postponed the birthday party. We’re not having it without you.”

“We told you it was canceled, Brad!” Sam hugged him.

The handsome young man ignored Clark as he hugged Sam back. “Hi, Sam. Was that Annie?”

“Brad! Jesus, I can’t believe you’re here! She took off five minutes ago. She’s flying the
King of the Sky
to St. Louis.”

“In this storm?! I figured D. K. wouldn’t let her go till morning.” From his raincoat pocket Brad pulled out a small velvet jewelry box with a black silk bow. It was as hip as his stylish black jacket and square-toed shoes. “I had everything planned. I was going to propose.” He stared at the ring box, perplexed, as if it had tricked him.

“You don’t need to propose. You’re married to her,” Clark reminded him grouchily.

Sam stepped between them. “She needs help. Go to St. Louis, Brad. If you miss her at the airport, try the Royal Coach Motel.” She touched his face. “You’ve got a mustache. That’s new.”

“Yeah. You like it?” Brad touched his fingers to the trim black mustache.

“It looks good.”

Clark rapped her shoulder. “Sam!”

Brad stared at one, then the other, uncertain.

She shoved him. “Go, go on. ‘Just raise your hand up, Chief.’”

Not sure what she meant by the “Chief” remark, Brad nonetheless felt moved to kiss Sam. “Where’s that wankhead D. K.?”

Clark pointed to the lights of D. K.’s “office,” a trailer nearer the runway. Brad ran off through the rain in that direction.

“You’re crazy,” Clark told Sam. “Why are you encouraging him? Don’t encourage him.”

“Oh Clark, she’s got to marry somebody. She wants to have a baby.”

“Says you. Besides, that’s no reason to marry the same somebody twice. How many times does she have to be Mrs. Hopper Two? Or t-o-o? Two times?”

“Funny.” Sam found a pack of Destin’s unfiltered cigarettes on a shelf crowded with engine parts. She shook one out. “You’re probably right.”

Clark stared at her. “What the hell are you doing, smoking?! What about your vow to give it up if Jimmy Carter won?”

Sam inhaled with satisfaction. “Yeah, well, the right wing outfoxed me and Jimmy both. Jimmy and Rosalynn are taping up Sheetrock in Uganda these days and neocons are running the country.”

“Maybe so, but they’re only smoking the occasional Cuban cigar, even though of course they despise Cuba as an enemy of the freedom to hang out in Mafia night spots where big shots used to be able to have a little fun.”

“You’re getting cynical, Clark.”

“No, I’m not. I love my country.”

“And don’t think I don’t know you’ve been sneaking cigarettes for years.”

They stood for a while, watching Brad’s silhouette gesticulate behind the dirty window of D. K.’s small trailer. Finally Sam asked, “Do you believe Jack was actually in prison in Cuba?”

“It’s entirely possible.” Clark grabbed at the cigarette but the athletic Sam spun easily away from him and sucked in a long drag before grinding it out.

After calling for Malpy, they decided to wait there for the Maltese to return from whatever exploration he was on. They stared together into the night, Clark leaning against a doorpost, Sam leaning on him.

Sam sighed from time to time.

Clark said, “Annie’s too smart for Brad.”

Sam sighed again. “Smart? Love’s not smart. Hey, I’m not stupid and I opened a joint bank account with a woman who ran off with my life savings to Belize, and it was her investment manager at the bank that she ran off with. The bitches.”

“Sam, there’s no honor among thieves.”

“I guess they were really in love.”

“Will you stop defending Jill?”

“I want Annie to be happy.” Sam looked sadly at car taillights in the dark, hurrying away from her. “That’s all I want.”

Clark laughed, shaking his head. “Jeez, our generation. Annie’s right. We still believe it all—true love, true grit, New Deal, huddled masses, anything your heart desires. We still think if you want something, you can have it.”

“‘Keep hope alive,’ Clark.”

“Were you happy? Why should Annie be happy?”

Sam said, “Because in America things are supposed to get better.”

T
he little plane was shaking. Her fingers doing a drumbeat on her instrument panel, Annie cheered as she climbed through the turbulence. To her surprise, a single sharp bark echoed her. She shouted again. There was another unmistakable yelp.

“Malpy?!”

Annie twisted around to see the opened tote bag in the tail of the aircraft. Out of it scooted the Maltese.

“Oh, great! Malpy! How’d you get in here?”

The little dog crawled toward her, flopping from side to side and made it finally into her lap, where he snuggled his head against her stomach, lifting his chin with a whimper. “Okay. Shh shh shh,” she told him.

The plane shuddered with a buck and Malpy yipped in a plaintive fret.

“We’re fine! Why, Claudette Colbert could do this, right?”

She radioed D. K., asking him to tell Clark and Sam that Malpy was in the plane with her, that she’d set her course for Elizabethtown, Kentucky (her refueling destination) and that she would call air traffic there with her
ETA
. “So, whose private jet was that?” she asked.

“That was Mr. Brad Hopper Jets, that guy I never liked and told you not to marry? New
VLJ
Mustang.”

“What? Brad?”

“How many husbands you got?”

“None,” Annie said. “I don’t have any husbands. I’m getting a divorce. Over.”

“Roger that.” D. K. growled, “Man just slammed into my office, madder’n Charlie at My Lai, ’cause you’d left. He even know you’re divorcing him? Over.”

“Don’t tell him where I’m headed…It’s rough up here, D. K. Go ahead.”

“You can do it, baby. Feel the wind and ride it. Wing and a prayer. You can do it. Roger that…Over.”

“Go ahead…D. K.? I can’t hear you. Come in.”

“Annie? Come on in, Annie…”

“D. K., go ahead.”

All D. K. heard was static.

Back on the ground at Destin Airworks, Clark put his wet arm around Sam’s shivering back. “Malpy must have sneaked in the damn plane again.”

“It was the chicken korma. I packed some with the coffee. She’ll call us. She’ll be fine…Clark, this is where you say, ‘She’ll be fine.’”

They walked out of the hangar into the rain.

Sam clutched his arm. “I don’t even know if I want her to find Jack. Could be he’ll just hurt her.”

In his slow soft drawl, Clark tried to offer comfort. “If Jack loves anybody, he loves her.”

Sam pointed out that terrible things were done out of love and that love was no excuse for them.

“Let’s go get that cake out of the freezer,” Clark suggested.

Just as they were getting into the Volvo, D. K.’s truck squealed to a stop beside them. “Annie’s got your dog with her,” he yelled from his window.

“We figured.”

D. K. yelled out the window again. “That was her cheatin’ husband Hopper in the
VLJ
.”

“We saw him,” Clark said.

Sam rose to the young man’s defense. “Brad flew up to propose to Annie. He really wants to patch things up.”

“Too bad he dropped a nuke on their marriage bed,” D. K. shouted.

“He’s following her to St. Louis,” Sam yelled.

D. K. laughed. “Yeah?”

Clark asked mildly what “Yeah?” meant.

“Means I don’t give him any fuckin’ fuel till I fix my fuckin’ radio. I’m hearing nothing but duck-quack on it. It’s going to take ’least two hours, maybe three, for me to fix that radio. Brad can chill.”