“Do they really,” Uncle Sal says. “Last week, they thought you were Scooper. Is that who you are?”
“Nah, not at all,” I say.
“The ‘Jett’ part is obvious,” Uncle Sal goes on. “We’ll spell it with two t’s, for effect. And ‘Spence’ picks up on your Grandpa Spencer’s name. Don’t worry. You’re Arlo Santiago to us, and always will be. But for promotional purposes, you’ll be Jett Spence.”
Lobo pumps a fist. “Go, Jett!”
“Wait!” Lee says. “‘Jett Spence’ is totally fake.”
Uncle Sal looks at her for a while, like he’s trying to weigh her allegiance, because most people don’t question him. “You’re right, Lee,” he says at last. “‘Jett Spence’ is totally fake. The whole Jeopardy! thing was totally fake too. But look what happened when we changed the name. Sulphur Springs, New Mexico, was dying on the vine. Today, Jeopardy, New Mexico, is thriving. The vine is producing succulent grapes. So what’s in a name? I’ll tell you what’s in a name—cha-CHING!”
He reaches into his pocket for his money clip. Peels off a one-hundred-dollar bill.
“Jett, go online and buy yourself a jumpsuit for the big night—something . . . Elvis-y. Something that says ‘I love America.’”
“I can help with that,” Lee says. “But to be totally honest, a hundred bucks isn’t enough. If we’re really serious, we’ll need at least two hundred.”
Uncle Sal goes cold. We suck in. Because you don’t question if Uncle Sal is serious. And you definitely don’t ask for more money. Not if you value your cojones. You take what he gives you, then figure it out. Even if it means reconstituting one of his yellow smokejumper suits hanging in the barn.
Finally, he cracks a grin. “Well, well. Jett, it looks like you’ve got yourself a personal manager here.” He peels off another Benjamin. “Get a jumpsuit with gauntlets.”
Lobo looks shocked. I’m feeling it too.
Uncle Sal shakes a finger at Cam. “Make sure Arlo’s bike is primed. I want it to both purr and roar. Here’s an idea—fill the tank with jet fuel. Maybe that can be part of our campaign.”
“Nah,” Cam says. “Jet fuel’s basically kerosene. It’d burn up the valves.”
“I’m okay with regular unleaded,” I say.
Uncle Sal shrugs. “If you boys can get high performance out of low octane, so be it. But Arlo . . . Jett! . . . remember, your good name is better than the best cologne. If you want it back, nail the jump.”
“Try my best,” I say.
“Don’t try,” Uncle Sal says. “There’s no such thing as ‘try’—only ‘do.’”
“Hey!” Lobo says. “You just quoted Yoda. ‘Do or do not. There is no try.”
Aunt Portia waddles in carrying a tray of foaming glasses. We all stand. In Lobo’s family, you stand for anybody of that generation, man or woman. Portia’s the last. She’s Uncle Sal’s aunt, Lobo’s great-aunt. She’s a scrawny five-foot tower of Italian peasant royalty.
Aunt Portia beams at Lee. “The secret—”
Cam and Lobo chorus, “The yeast, the yeast.”
“That’s right,” Aunt Portia says to Lee. “The secret is in the yeast.”
Cam rescues the tray, and we each grab a glass of Aunt Portia’s world-famous hoja santa. Everybody takes a sip except Lee.
Uncle Sal gasps. “Man-o-man!”
“Mmm—excellent batch!” Cam says.
Lobo wipes an arm across his foam mustache.
Aunt Portia says to Lee, “Mix the sarsaparilla and licorice roots. Add just a pinch of hoja santa. And remember to mix the yeast grains evenly with the sugar.”
“I will,” Lee says.
Aunt Portia waits for Lee to take a sip. She finally does.
“It . . . tastes . . . um . . . like root beer, only . . . only . . . ”
Only hell! Aunt Portia’s hoja santa has blow-your-brains-out carbonation, plus a tart acidity that makes your spine shudder and vertebrae fall into place. Plus Aztecan medicinal qualities. Plus something of the Italian earth.
A mellow buzz sets in. Aunt Portia insists it’s not alcoholic, but I’ve drunk real beer that’s a lot weaker. We’re always different after we drink her hoja santa.
Humbler. Calmer. Wiser.
I nudge Lee. “Hey, you ever go skydiving?”
“No, why do you ask?”
Before I can tell her, Aunt Portia plants her face in mine. “Arlo, introduce me to your girlfriend.”
“I’m not his girlfriend,” Lee says.
Aunt Portia makes to swat me. “Arlo, what’s wrong with you! You ain’t brought a girl like her around since—”
“Since ever,” Lobo says.
Aunt Portia swings around and makes to swat Lobo. “You should see the girls he brings over. Ugh! Half their buttons never been used. At least Arlo has standards.”
“Hey, I got standards too,” Lobo says.
“No, Lobo, you do not have standards,” Aunt Portia says.
Lee holds out her hand. “I’m Lee Fields.”
Aunt Portia takes her hand and caresses it. “I’d know you anywhere. Your Aunt Lupita used to come to our Christmas parties. She and your mother, Arlo, were the two prettiest girls in the county. Lupita played piano. And, Arlo, your mom played the concertina.”
“Accordion,” I say.
Aunt Portia still has Lee’s hand. “I’m so glad you know my boys. Arlo and Cam practically grew up with us. They helped with the expansion after we got the Jeopardy! money. And they built the airstrip all by themselves—cleared and rolled it. They even moved my privy. That reminds me—”
“Oh, yes!” Lobo says. “Tell her!”
I shudder. “Definitely do not tell her.”
“Lee, you must hear this,” Uncle Sal says. “It’s one of Portia’s Top Forty.”
Lee laughs. “I’d love to hear it.”
“Well,” Aunt Portia says, smoothing a hand down her skirt, “I call Arlo my Little Craphouse Compadre—”
“Aie-eeeeeee!” Lobo shrieks.
“Hush, Lobo! Let me tell it,” Aunt Portia says. “Well, one morning when Arlo was four or five years old, I was . . . ahem! . . . in the privy. The latch turns, and in steps little Arlo. He drops his pants and sits beside me on the next hole. ‘Good morning, Aunt Portia. How are you today? Isn’t it a beautiful morning?’ He goes on like this, and we have a wonderful conversation. Just like we’re snapping peas on the porch. Even as a little boy, Arlo had nice manners. He could talk like a book. He was an old soul. After a time, he finished his business, buckled up, and said, ‘Nice speaking to you, Aunt Portia,’ and then he slipped out. He even remembered to pull the door closed. So many children would have forgotten, but not Arlo. It just tickled me. Ever since, I’ve called him my little Craphouse Compadre.”
Lee looks at me and laughs. I want to crawl under the couch.
“Little Arlo sounds like quite a character,” Lee says.
“Character is forever,” Lobo says.
“See what I mean? Top Forty,” Uncle Sal says.
He swivels around, pulls back the curtain, and inspects the sky.
“Magic hour, kids.”
Chapter 24
WE BANG OUT THE BACK door into the emptiness of late afternoon. Tangerine sun. Fingernail moon. Twink of Venus. It’s all here. All boring and amazing at the same time. The day is dying. The year is dying. It truly is magic hour. A time to live, because death feels so close.
“What do you know about flying?” Uncle Sal asks Lee.
“Nothing.”
“Perfect. Come with me.”
They march across the landing strip to the hangar. Cam, Lobo, and I go to the barn and pole down two parachutes. Lobo takes the table, and Cam spreads out on the floor. Their fingers go to work.
A pecking order exists here, too. I’m top QA: quality assurance. Uncle Sal won’t let Lobo be QA. Just Cam and me, and I beat him by a year.
I watch as they clear their shroud lines, check for snags, square their ca
nopies, and fold from the bottom up, as Uncle Sal taught us. Lobo gets a bit sloppy with his static lines, so I rewrap them around the metal loop. I help him with his pilot chute. Then I pole down my chute. Cam QAs.
“Packing is prayer,” Uncle Sal likes to say.
We zip into the yellow smokejumper suits Uncle Sal bought on surplus, complete with fluorescent cuffs, radio pockets, and shovel straps. We each carry a cell phone, flashlight, and hook knife. Lobo has been known to carry something to smoke after landing. Me, I’m not into that. It defeats the purpose.
We shoulder into our rigs and head outside. We can hear Uncle Sal and Lee powering up in the hangar. Uncle Sal’s a fanatic about his checklist.
Pretty soon, the Hi-O Silver rolls out and noses into the wind. Not many people go up with us at this point. They talk like they will, but when they peer into the cabin and see that Uncle Sal has stripped it for skydiving, and all that’s left is a pilot seat and a butt-hard floor, plus an open hole where the door should be, they chicken out.
“Got ourselves a passenger,” Uncle Sal says.
“Way to go, Lee!” Lobo says.
She scoots in back and folds up her knees. I get in next, then Cam. Lobo wedges himself up front by Uncle Sal, back against the dash.
“Lobo, move your ass six inches to the left,” Uncle Sal says.
The Hi-O Silver is designed to carry four people, and we are five. So Uncle Sal takes care to distribute our weight. We all shift a few inches.
I press up against Lee. Lobo winks.
“Pass this back,” Uncle Sal says.
We hand Lee a barf bag.
“Will there be much turbulence?” she asks.
“It’s not the turb I’m worried about,” Uncle Sal says.
He pulls out a Cupido cigar and stuffs it in his mouth. “Relax, I won’t light up till after they’ve jumped.”
Uncle Sal mumbles his mantra—“Fuel. Throttle. Magneto. Ammeter.”—and cranks to 1,000 rpm. Guns it to 1,800. The propeller blades strobe into a single line and then disappear.
We go. Build past the hangar, the junked generations of trucks and tractors. Blast down the airstrip. Aunt Portia comes out and waves. We lift off and whine into the sky.
We fly west toward Kit Carson Mesa and the flattening sun. Make a sweet chandelle turn and begin to climb. To the north, Zuni Mesa looks like an aircraft carrier. To the northeast, Burro Mesa, where the dust of Mom lies—where Dad has marked a square of earth for her monument—looks like a fortress on fire. As we fly over, I lean out the door.
Lee gasps.
“Aw, don’t worry about him,” Lobo yells over the engine noise. “He always does that. Arlo lives on the edge.”
I pull Lee beside me and throw an arm around her. Because all first-timers need to see this: God’s IMAX. Especially at magic hour. Fear and wonder shine in her eyes.
“Just lean with me,” I say into her ear.
She tucks against me but keeps a hand on the wall grip. “I’m not into heights,” she yells.
“It’s not a height anymore,” I say. “We’re way too high for that. Think of it as a front-row seat.” I point to Burro Mesa. A couple dozen browns are scattered across the flat top, little specks, grazing. “That’s the highest mesa in the whole damn state and my favorite place in the world. See how the north rim breaks sheer and clean?”
Lee leans with me, looks down.
“Yes, I see it.”
“That break, that’s the border where New Mexico ends and Colorado begins. And up there, those are the—”
“Spanish Peaks,” Lee says.
“Yup. And those in the far distance—”
“The Rockies.”
“Yeah, well, everything’s the Rockies,” I say. “Those are what we call the Front Range. That peak in the middle—the whale back—way, way up—”
“Pike’s Peak,” Lee says.
I squeeze her shoulder. “You got it.”
“Will we fly over my aunt’s place?”
“Yeah.”
We climb in a miles-wide spiral. Soon we’re over Chicorica Canyon, looking down on the whole of Lupita’s ranch—some seven thousand acres—from the high rim rocks to the cattle-specked valley. It’s the country Lupita and Mom used to ride.
“Oh my God!” Lee says. “It looks so dry.”
“Bone-ass,” I say.
She points to the dam. “All because of that.”
From up here, it’s easy to see how the dam divides Lupita’s land into bright green and tinder brown sections. The majority is tinder brown.
“Too bad this plane isn’t a Predator drone,” I say. “We could fix the whole mess right now.”
“Lee,” Uncle Sal shouts over the engine. “Everything sounds cheap up here. Even Johnny Cash. The exception is Italian opera. I hope you’re a fan of the Lone Ranger.”
“I’m not not a fan,” Lee says, and we move back into our places.
Uncle Sal switches on the sound system. A lone cello cuts through the rpm.
“This is the William Tell overture,” he shouts. “It’s better known as the Lone Ranger theme. Composed by Rossini. It’s the greatest skydiving tune ever written.”
We listen to the drum growl and the flutes tiptoe. Then the whole orchestra slams in, and Uncle Sal begins to conduct with his unlit Cupido. Just when you think something’s going to break, maybe even the wings, the music tapers into a sweet, fluty sunrise.
Kenya Man is way more my style, but up here, when you look down on lonesome infinities, your pores open up, and Rossini soaks into you.
We’re approaching our drop zone—a stump- and gully-free field a mile and a half up the highway from Two Hole.
“You’re on, Camerado,” Uncle Sal says.
Cam scoots to the open door, reaches for the wing strut, plants his foot on the step, and swings outside the plane. He holds and waits as Lobo crowds onto the step beside him. Now they are four white knuckles gripping the wing strut.
“Queuing up,” Uncle Sal says. “Lee, you’re gonna love this.” He cranks the volume. You can hear French horns riding to the rescue. Uncle Sal launches into his spiel:
“Who is that masked man who rides the range and fights injustice?”
Cam, Lobo, and I shout: “The Lone Ranger!”
Uncle Sal recites the Lone Ranger’s creed:
“God gave us firewood, but we must gather the light ourselves.”
“Amen!” we shout.
“To have a friend, a man must be one.”
“Amen!” we shout.
“Everyone has within himself the power to—”
Before he can finish the creed, the French horns gallop up. Uncle Sal shouts:
“Hi-o, Silver, awayyyyyyyy!”
“Awwayyyyyyyyy!” Lobo screams, and he and Cam tumble back into the sky.
Now it’s my turn.
ME—maximum efficiency. Slide to the door. Feet on step. Hands on strut. Hold. One . . . two . . .
And my own creed:
Yea, though I fly through the valley of the shadow . . .
Lee touches my shoulder. Never do that. Never cloud my mind when I’m about to jump. I brush her hand off.
“Hi-o, Silver, awayyyyyyyy!”Uncle Sal shouts.
I let go.
Flip into the sky.
Ball up.
One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .
Cam and Lobo wait for me to join them—if you can call falling spread-eagled at 160 miles an hour waiting.
I close in, pop out of my tuck, reach, and catch Cam’s hand. Then Lobo’s. We snap into a circle. We would never hold hands like this on the ground. But in the air, brotherhood is natural.
TWILIGHT AND BURNING VENUS.
Dusk in the purple west.
I land on soft earth.
Cam touches down easy too.
Lobo skates to a stop on his knees. Farts majestically. “Oh hell, yes!” he cries. We gather in our chutes.
As we tramp up the shoulder of the Clayton highwa
y, approaching cars ignite us like matchsticks. They slow down to check us out. Our fluorescent cuffs glow radioactively.
“Escaped from Pluto!” Lobo shouts at one car.
It’s dark when we reach Two Hole. We hang our chutes in the barn. Peel out of our smokejumpers. Go to the house. Uncle Sal is sitting in his armchair, reading the Albuquerque Journal. He’s smoked the Cupido down to a stub.
“Sadly, Lee was a casualty,” he says, tapping his ash into the cup of a golf trophy. “Maybe if I’d smoked a Tiparillo instead. This crafted Cuban can really turn the stomach.”
“That barf bag didn’t work?” Cam asks.
“Barf bags only work when you barf into them,” Uncle Sal says.
“That’s true,” Lobo says.
We go into the kitchen and hydrate ourselves under the faucet. Then we dehydrate ourselves with some super chunky peanut butter on Cabaret crackers.
We come back into the living room and flop on the couch. Lobo clicks on the TV. It’s news hour, but he flips to Family Guy. Overhead, the floorboards creak.
Lee and Aunt Portia start down the stairs. When Aunt Portia sees us, she grabs Lee’s shoulders and plants her on a middle step.
“Hey, you boys, turn down that trash!” she cries.
Lobo thumbs the volume.
“Stand up!”
We stand and face the stairs. Uncle Sal lowers the Journal.
“Take a look—huh!” Aunt Portia says. “Because this is what a real girl looks like.”
Lee’s wearing a dress pulled from some immigrant trunk or mothball closet. A wine-colored dress. Simple as Cinderella. The most skin you can see is her collarbone, and it doesn’t exactly cling.
She’s holding a plastic shopping bag—kind of hiding it behind her.
“Guess, I wasn’t born with an iron stomach,” she says.
Lobo snickers. “Guess not.”
“Hey-hey-hey!” Aunt Portia snaps. “You listen to me, you boys. You can go all over the world—Timbuktu to China—but you’ll never see so plain as you’re seeing now a beautiful girl. Look at her! Mio dio! Lobo, if you make another face, I swear—”
Uncle Sal flourishes his cigar. “A moment of silence—for beauty.”
Lee reddens. “Oh my God, I’m not—”
Dirt Bikes, Drones, and Other Ways to Fly Page 13