by Eric Beetner
She called the helicopter rides viajes magia and anytime an opportunity for “magic travel” presented itself, she lit up, bounced on her toes, and stretched her arms overhead as she clapped her hands. The way she wiggled her hips as she did that always made it hard to concentrate. And he always loved that she wasn’t afraid of heights like his wife.
Maria stared out the window, looking down at the ground with her forehead on the glass and a smile he recognized even from behind. It was impossible to keep her fully in her seat and he never wanted to seem like a father figure to her, so she never wore a seatbelt. In his mind, no better reason existed to ignore safety procedures.
The love he felt for her overtook his hate as the hem of her green dress rode high, revealing the tanned thighs that had clamped his torso and his head, on various occasions. Kinsey adjusted his sunglasses over his eyes because he and Maria were through. She just didn’t know it yet.
Maria’s excitement pissed him off today because of her oblivion to his pain. It made his pulse throb into his throat. She didn’t love him, really love him, or else she hadn’t been wholly satisfied by him. Either way meant the end of their relationship, the past year a waste.
He bit his tongue to keep the peace because he couldn’t resist her anytime she got angry. The passion in her expression always proved too much to bear without caving. No. He just had to suck it up long enough to fly her around town and then back to her car. After that, it was Adios, perra—good-bye, bitch—and he’d never think of her again.
As her green dress rode up higher, he touched his shirt pocket. A folded piece of paper crinkled against his fingers. The sensation comforted him. He needed some sort of reminder to keep him strong, so earlier that day, he’d written a single word on the piece of paper that anytime he thought he might cave in to his desires, he could pull out the piece of paper and be reminded of why he decided to cut ties with her after this flight, this viejes magia.
He hadn’t broken his vows in eighteen years of marriage, until Maria. Her beauty was eye catching, but he’d been around lots of beautiful women in his life. Maria had a way of looking at him that invigorated him physically and emotionally. Drawn to and aroused more strongly than by anyone else, ever, but it was more than that. She made work and home and the daily problems fall to the background. When he was with her, no one else existed except the two of them. They had a year of passionate afternoons a couple times a week and an evening every month or so in her apartment, but it was on the first overnight business trip he’d snuck her on that he realized just how deeply he was in love with her.
After all this time, the last thing he wanted was a confrontation, or drama. He was just fulfilling a promise until the immanent termination of their relationship, where he’d turn his back on her—cut her out of his life completely. She always impressed him as stubborn enough to try getting through his secretaries, but if she did, she’d have to deal with the two thousand pounds of security guards he called assistant managers.
The headphones almost blocked out the high-hertz hum of the engine and thwacking of the blade rotating overhead, a noise perceptible most vividly in his ribs. Through the windshield and windows along the side door, Tampa unfolded beneath them. It was impossible to focus on any single thing for long. They flew from Davis Island over the downtown skyline, across Dale Mabry Highway, and passed right over the Buccaneers’ stadium, which looked small from up there, but still bigger than everything else except the mall across the street. He recognized other buildings and neighborhoods, knew who owned which stretches of land beneath the green treetops, and could identify every road running through the muck of his state like tributaries to the Hillsborough River.
The eastward ride was bumpy in unpredictable patterns. Some bumps jostled them as if he were driving his Mercedes in a cypress swamp. Others dropped his stomach as if gravity switched on and off. There were moments where Maria bounced around, bumped her knee or her head and cursed in Spanish. After a few moments he looked over at her sitting sideways in her seat, breathing shallow as if whispering a song. Her head pressed to the window in the center of the door.
“My apologies for the bumps,” the pilot said over his microphone. “The air should smooth out when we get further east.”
Maria’s color faded from tan to pale to green. Kinsey hated her. Could barely stand to look at her. He raised his voice into the microphone built into his headset, “My petite-flower is wilting back here,” he said. “Maybe we should do this some other time.” He sat back as a surge of resentment flooded his torso.
“It’s your call, Mr. Kinsey,” the pilot said. “But I can’t guarantee when the air currents will be any better in the next few weeks.”
That was unacceptable to Kinsey’s time line for this pending project. “I need to see Loughton Groves before then,” Kinsey said to Maria. “My decision is due in three days.”
“This may be your best bet,” the pilot said.
Kinsey looked to Maria. He wanted to spite her, but she looked too green and pathetic. Before he could tell the pilot to turn around, Maria smiled until her green cheeks dimpled and she nodded. Their hands squeezed each other’s.
“How long that take?” she asked, her head hung low, her eyes upward and expectant.
The pilot looked at his watch, “I can have us over there in twenty minutes if you don’t mind a few more bumps.”
Kinsey looked to Maria again. He wanted to cradle her in his arms.
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
Kinsey nodded and gave the pilot a thumbs-up. “Do it, but find smoother air, will you?” He patted Maria’s knee. “Hold on, my flower. This will be quick.” If she heard him, she didn’t acknowledge.
The air got even choppier for a few silent moments. The helicopter bounced around and Kinsey tightened his seatbelt across his lap to prevent gaps that would jar him in this turbulence. He looked at Maria. Sweat visible on her forehead, gone was the Maria-ness that made her beautiful.
Blood surged to his temples and heat radiated across his brow and over his ears as he thought about his security chief, a man he called Platinum, leaving Maria’s apartment one anguished morning. His team had assembled audiotape recordings of his phone conversations with Maria; photos of them in the bed. Evidence that would hold up in any courtroom. He didn’t want to think about the two of them in bed, sweaty, and her sighing from the ecstasy provided by another man.
The land they were going to see was deep into the unincorporated county, completely undeveloped. It had the potential of being his biggest residential development project to date and that kind of money might settle his mind.
As they approached the property, vast areas of green and brown land without an inch of concrete opened up before him. Unspoiled land. The land as he imagined it was in the time of his childhood, thirty years ago when he was a third-grader shooting rabbits in the woods with the .22 rifle his father had given him. As pristine as it had been in the days of the Seminoles and the dinosaurs before them. The air smoothed out. The ride was calm. The pilot let out a loud sigh.
Kinsey adjusted his sunglasses. The headphones blocked out everything except the sound of his thumping heartbeat. They hovered over the parcel of land he was planning to buy. Land Kinsey knew well. It looked different from the air, but the expanse of cypress knees, palmettos, and scrub pines was where he’d spent weekends and hours after school playing Cowboys and Indians or Army.
This was the terrain of feral hogs and a pack of them ran through the underbrush off to the helicopter’s left. Kinsey stared as their movement reminded of the time he crossed paths with them at nine years old out in the cabbage palms and Cyprus knees between his house and State Road 60. He was a grown man of forty now, but that terrifying day out hunting rabbits plays on loop behind his eyes.
He and Bobby Little had their .22s and pillowcases full of bologna sandwiches and half-pint orange juice cartons when they stumbled upon a lone piglet digging its nose into the ground
. Young Kinsey leveled his .22 at the piglet’s shoulder, but did not take the shot. Instead, the piglet looked up, squealed, and ran into the brush. Moments later, a chorus of rustling and snorting caused him and Bobby Little to drop their pillowcases as they scrambled to run from a pack of the wild, snorting beasts. The thick-skulled hog that chased him was twice as wide, three hundred pounds if it was an ounce. Its brown hide slicked black with mud or blood, especially around its mouth that had tusks as long as Kinsey’s arm and sharp as razor blades.
Any direction he went, a pig was hot on his heels. It was a pack of them. His legs pumped like pistons and he grunted with each step. The fear of them feasting on his flesh, stripping his bones clean with their tusks and teeth, propelled him faster than he’d ever run before, or since.
Years later, he’d study zoology and even ethology at the University of Florida, where he’d learned about a hog’s habits and behaviors, all of which made him hate them even more.
They always travel in groups of two to thirty or more, with some groups reaching a hundred, at least temporarily. As big and aggressive as the boars are, a sow protecting her piglets is even more dangerous. He didn’t know it as a nine-year-old, but he must’ve stumbled upon a piglet nest.
Aggressive enough to charge with their tusks. All of them screeching their high-pitched alarm, that was like ice picks in his ears.
Little Allen Kinsey was the first kid in Brandon to grow up wearing sunglasses. His parents weren’t strict about much, but they insisted he not spend time outdoors without his sunglasses. They were child-sized versions of the kind they never left the house without. He grew to believe in their power. During the chase, his glasses fogged up, which made being chased in the woods all the more dangerous.
He didn’t know then that the hogs were sure footed and rapid runners up to thirty miles per hour and able to jump three-foot high obstacles. If he did, he would’ve tried to shimmy up a tree.
During the chase, little Allen Kinsey tripped over a cypress knee and lost his sunglasses as he crashed to the ground. He got whipped ten times that evening when he showed up without them.
He hated the hogs so much, he’d never eat pork, but they are what ultimately got him out of the woods and into town toward pavement, where everything was smooth and the only things to occupy his energies had wheels. Skateboards, bikes, motorcycles, cars. There was a time he raced all of them, and he rarely lost.
Now he was in a helicopter and he seethed inside. Still, he couldn’t help admiring the green space he would convert from dangerous regions into subdivisions, golf courses, and manicured parks so his grandchildren could thrive in the safe environment he never had. He wanted to know children would be able to run and play without fear of being gored by tusks or trampled or otherwise ripped to shreds.
Maria glanced up and swallowed hard, seemingly grateful for the smoother air. She picked at a chipped fingernail long enough to glance out the window. She smoothed her finger over the jagged paint on her nail as if embarrassed by the imperfection.
This ride, this relationship, would be over soon enough, but what he feared most was having too much to drink at a business dinner some night and showing up at her door, drunk and love struck. Or going crazy if he saw her in town one day. He was certain he wouldn’t bear the pain with any semblance of dignity. This thought, this fear, caused sweat to pour down his neck.
Kinsey leaned over. He felt the seatbelt cut into his lap, but struggled against it. He ran his hand long the side of her neck and under the fall of her dark hair. That always put her in the mood. He loved her most when she was in the mood. He could barely call what he did with his wife as intercourse. If he had to, he’d describe that as her tolerating his carnal desires adequately. But he and Maria weren’t just on the same page, they could’ve actually written an instruction book for passionate sex. He’d been with women who faked the enthusiasm, but he’d never met a woman who so consistently displayed the exhaustion or appreciation as Maria. She smiled at him now, tender and pleased. He took a moment to inhale the coconut fragrance there and tightened his grip as he used his other hand to slide open the door.
Wind rushed into the cabin and blew Maria’s long, dark hair into his face.
The pilot contorted in his seat and hollered, “What the hell? Close that door!”
His sunglasses were identical to Kinsey’s. Kinsey held the door open with one hand and squinted against the wind blowing into his face. The altitude seemed higher suddenly and wind made him conscious of the helicopter’s speed. So high. So fast. He fought to hold the door open with one hand. With his other hand, he grabbed Maria’s head and pushed it into the opening. She struggled against him, but he bore down with his left hand and summoned the strength necessary to push her head, neck, and shoulders through the opening.
His skin chilled from the cool December air, made cooler by the altitude. He pushed harder on her head. Yelled, “You broke my heart, you fucking whore.” The rotor wash and the headphones kept the sound of his voice from reaching his own ears, but he felt the words strain his throat. He had no way to know if she heard him. “Fuck!” he yelled.
She’d come off her seat a little. Her hair whipped at him now and strands caught in Kinsey’s mouth. The idea of closing her head in the door surged through him like whiskey.
“Shut that door immediately!” the pilot yelled. The helicopter ascended as he fidgeted his attention between Kinsey and the air on the other side of the windshield.
The guy had worked for Kinsey for more than ten years, but Kinsey had no confidence the pilot would keep his mouth shut. Kinsey’s arms struggled to hold Maria and the door, but anger raged through him instead of muscle fatigue. He looked away from the pilot and at Maria’s flailing arms as they slapped at the bulkhead in an attempt to gain purchase and push herself back into the cabin. Kinsey grunted from the frustration. He changed his grip from her neck to her shoulder and pulled Maria back in. Fastened the door closed. His ears popped with the pressure of altitude.
Maria yelled in Spanish. Screamed, at Kinsey. A solitary string of words that she rattled off like automatic gunfire.
Kinsey leaned toward the pilot. Yanked the seatback. “Don’t you ever question me again. You understand? I thought she was going to vomit.” Kinsey sat all the way back into his own seat. “I really did,” he said more to the pilot than to Maria. After a few minutes, he tapped her knee. “We’re almost there,” he said.
Maria didn’t speak for the rest of the flight. Kinsey knew it was killing her to keep her mouth shut. That wasn’t her style. She was vocal, mouthy. Unable to hold her tongue or keep her temper from flaring. Hers was a head full of opinions. Enthusiasm. Kinsey usually loved when she argued with him. He kind of wished she would now. But it was too late for arguments. Reconciliation. Makeup sex.
The helicopter pitched forward. “Mr. K., I’ll have us down in a minute.”
Kinsey turned his attention to the window and marveled at the stretches of land beneath them. Pins on a map were never as impressive as seeing his land from the highest possible vantage point.
They descended into a clearing of pines and palmetto scrub near a pond on the undeveloped Loughton family property that Kinsey was interested in buying. This parcel was twenty thousand acres tucked away in the northeastern part of Hillsborough County, a couple miles from the nearest paved road. The pond beside their landing spot was black and weeded over with tall grasses and cattails.
On the ground, Maria opened the door beside her even faster than Kinsey had done mid-flight. She took no time or caution in jumping to the ground, where she landed with her high heels stabbing into the sandy earth like tent stakes. With the door open, the cool December air filled the cabin. After a hint of struggle, Maria stepped her muddy shoes free and stormed off toward the edge of the palmetto scrub.
Kinsey sat back—felt the overhead rotor blade turning to a gradual stop. There was no way to know if the pilot bought the airsickness excuse.
“You thought what?”
“I didn’t realize you were trying to help her. I couldn’t tell from up here.”
Kinsey watched Maria. It took her many steps with those high heels to traverse the clearing. She halted at the edge of the scrub—palmetto and pines sprawled out in every direction, all the way to the horizon. She stood cast in full sunlight. Pine needles provided little shade. She was yelling. Probably in Spanish though Kinsey couldn’t tell.
“Look at her,” Kinsey said. “She’s more out of place than a pearl in an outhouse.”
“She is striking, sir.”
“What’s striking is the potential of this fucking land.”
The pilot didn’t respond.
“You don’t think it has potential?”
The pilot turned sideways to face Kinsey. Their matching sunglasses staring into each other’s. “I understand development and progress and all, but it’s still a shame that stretches of nature like this are disappearing.”
Kinsey pointed out at the scrub land around them. “Progress makes the wetlands go away. DDT makes the mosquitoes go away. Air conditioning makes the heat go away. But I make homes for the complainers to live in. Guys like us are the last generation that really remembers nature. You know what I mean, son?”
“I know. It’s just a shame, is all.”
“Do you know who we’re building these communities for?”
The pilot looked out at the land before him. “People with money?”
“We’re building houses for people looking for a better life. And where better than the Sunshine State to start that better life? What’s not to like? It’s year-round golfing with beaches nearby. Like being on vacation every day for the rest of your life. People have been blazing a trail down I-95 for the past fifty years. Well guess what? Miami is crowded. And expensive, to boot. And don’t get me started on what the boatlift did to the area. No, sir. What these good people want is a nice, clean place that’s affordable. A place for working stiffs to raise their families. No projects. No traffic. No snow. They’ll be so happy to be away from the morass of the great North, because these aren’t just houses, they’re trophies to these people. We’re making trophies here, son. This parcel happens to be for much bigger trophies, granted, but it’s all the same. And we’re presenting them to the fine people flocking to our fair peninsula. And in the meantime, just remember that everything we do for them here will feed your family. Your family likes to eat, don’t they?”