Just Fly Away

by Andrew McCarthy

  She wanted to know my name and how old I was and where I was headed. I told her I was going to Bennelton.

  “I make the trip fairly often,” I said, “so it’s no big deal.”

  “Well you certainly seem very mature for someone so young.”

  I liked her right away. She had the old-lady voice, kind of frail and trilly, and her face had ten thousand lines on it. She was so wrinkled that you could almost not even tell she had wrinkles. But the wrinkles made her kind of beautiful also, as if she was the oldest person on the planet.

  “Your grandfather is very lucky to have such a devoted granddaughter. Such a long journey.”

  “Well, we’re very close,” I went on. I was making up stuff left and right. “We always have been.”

  She looked directly into my eyes every time I spoke. She nodded her head carefully, as if she were attempting to understand something complicated, instead of my crazy fabrications about how I was accustomed to travel and all the hardships it entailed.

  “So when you get to Portland, you know you have to go over to the Transportation Center.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I told her. “That’s no problem; do it all the time.” I was really getting up a good head of steam.

  She told me that her son-in-law was picking her up in Portland and they would drop me off at the station. She didn’t ask me if they could give me a lift; she just told me that that’s what was going to happen. It felt nice.

  “I just love Robert,” she said. “That’s his name, Robert, not Bob.” Her own daughter was difficult, she said. And that was the word she used, difficult, but not Robert; he was a dreamboat. It felt a bit awkward to hear such an old lady call someone a dreamboat but it sounded like it was a word from her era, so it fit.

  Sure enough her son-in-law was waiting right outside the bus when it pulled up to the curb at the Portland station. I would not have qualified him as a dreamboat. He was a bit chubby and moved kind of slow, but I imagine her qualifications for dreamboat were different than mine. He was a very polite man and in a few short minutes I was deposited outside the Transportation Center. I insisted that I knew exactly where I was going and marched inside with a wave over my shoulder.

  Once I was through the door I raced for the bathroom. This may not sound very delicate, but sometimes taking a pee is one of the most satisfying things a person can do. But then once I walked back out into the station I felt lost. It’s not that the place was so big; compared to the other two bus depots I had been in it should have been no sweat, and it wasn’t busy at all; it’s just that I hadn’t really thought what would happen after I got this far. I had somehow figured that once I was in Maine that would be it.

  By now I did have some experience on the road, so I walked up to the information counter in the corner and inquired how I might get to Bennelton and how far the trip was.

  There was a Concord Coach leaving for Rockport, which was ten miles from Bennelton, at 12:15 p.m. I looked up at the clock over on the back wall of the information booth and saw that it was not even noon. I started laughing. For some reason the fact that I was here in Maine before noon amazed me. This time yesterday I was still in New Jersey. I hadn’t yet brought Simon to my house, or to meet Thomas, or had a big fight. What a twenty-four hours.

  I bought a ticket for $8.50 and headed toward the bus idling out front.

  I considered telling the bus driver, who was standing beside the bus chatting with two other men, that he was causing a lot of pollution and wasting gas at the same time, but a sign across the road proclaiming Only $7.50 for the Best Crab Cakes in Maine caught my eye. Instead of yelling at the driver I asked him if that was true.

  “I don’t know if they’re the best,” he said in an accent that reminded me of the woman at the Boston donut counter, “but they’re wicked good.”

  I’d had crab cakes before, down the shore, but even so, the image I always get in my mind when I hear crab cakes is a birthday cake with vanilla frosting and lots of crab claws sticking out the sides.

  “Better hurry,” the driver said. “We’re leaving in ten minutes.”

  These crab cakes of course looked nothing like a birthday cake. Maybe it was the spicy mayo, but they were indeed wicked good. Wicked was officially my new favorite word.

  14

  By now I was sick and tired of getting on buses. But I took my seat in the front row again, and then, without realizing it, I fell fast asleep.

  I had the strangest dream. I was boarding a plane with Simon. We were walking down that portable hallway that connects the terminal to the plane. Just as I was stepping on board I softly kicked the outside of the plane three times for luck. I wasn’t sure where we were going, but the flight attendant greeting everyone as we got on was very friendly and pointed us toward the back of the plane. As the plane started to take off I realized I was terrified of flying. I clutched Simon’s hand really hard and he laughed. I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was looking at me with that goofy grin of his.

  Then we were up in the cockpit and flying the plane. But it wasn’t a giant passenger jet like the one we had boarded; instead, it was a tiny two-seater propeller plane. We were both holding those airplane steering wheels, not the full-circle ones in cars, but the kind that are half wheels with no top and bottom, only sides. I wasn’t sure which one of us was actually flying and who was the copilot, but we pulled back on the wheels and we went up through the clouds.

  Then we were outside the plane and bouncing on the clouds as if they were giant fluffy trampolines. What a feeling! If there is a definition of the word joy, bouncing on those clouds would be it. In the dream, I realized I had never truly experienced joy until that instant, and now that I had, nothing would ever be the same again. But it didn’t last long.

  Soon we were back in the cockpit, but it was a giant plane now and we were flying incredibly close to the ground, first through the country between lots of trees, then in a city. We had to keep tipping the plane way over on its side to avoid the wings hitting trees and the buildings lining the narrow streets we were flying through. We had to fly under low bridges. It was terrifying. It was all coming at us so fast. Then we landed the plane just outside of the town—on a small road. Everyone hurried off like the plane was going to catch fire; none of the passengers said thank you to us for saving them with such daredevil flying. As we were walking into the town, I realized we were in a foreign country where no one spoke my language.

  Then I woke up. I’m not much of a dream interpreter, so I didn’t try, but my forehead was kind of clammy, though it might have been from the sun.

  The ocean was right out my window. The coast was rocky, not at all like the Jersey shore. I thought it would be fun to be floating in the water with all the seagulls diving into the ocean around me as they looked for lunch. After a few minutes I leaned forward and asked the driver how long till we got to Rockport.

  He turned and stared at me for a second. “We passed Rockport about fifteen minutes ago. I called it out; how’d you miss it?”

  “I guess I was sleeping,” I mumbled.

  “You can get off at Belfast in about twenty minutes and get a bus back.” The driver didn’t seem that concerned with my plight.

  “When is there a bus going back?” I could hear that my voice was high and shrill.

  “You’ll have to ask there.” He shrugged, and was basically done with me.

  Maybe I was just getting sick and tired of traveling, or maybe it was because I was almost out of money and didn’t know what I’d do once it was gone, or perhaps it was because the whole thing was starting to seem like a stupid idea, but the ocean out the window now looked like a cold and not very nice place to swim. The last thing I needed on top of everything else was to have seagulls pooping all over my head as I bobbed up and down trying not to drown in the undertow or get dashed against the rocks.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the flattened coin Simon had given me, the one with the little teardrop at the end.
I rubbed it, turning it over and over in my hand—but I had to put it away. I was going to start crying if I kept that up. There are times in life when it feels nice to be sad and lonely—this was not one of them.

  Just as it was beginning to seem as if I was never going to get anywhere, we pulled into the bus station in Belfast, except it was not a bus station at all. It was a Shell gas station with a very appropriately named Dead River Convenience store attached to it. It was already 2:30 and the next bus back wasn’t until 6 p.m. I had a grand total of $1.28 left. A ticket back to Rockport was $5.25. Out the window I could see a bench by the side of the road. I bought a Coke for a dollar and went to sit on it to review my situation.

  I was basically broke. I had no means of getting anywhere. I had no means of communication. No one in the world knew where I was—which, if it hadn’t been for my current situation, would have been a feeling I liked. I was stuck. I finished my soda and concluded that my situation sucked.

  I was about to go back inside and explain this to the guy behind the counter and see if he would let me ride back for free since I had simply missed my stop and had no intention of ending up in Belfast, when a red pickup truck that had been filling up at the pump pulled over to me. The guy behind the wheel had a mesh baseball cap. He leaned across the seat and rolled down the passenger window and shouted out to me.

  “Where you headed?” He had a shaggy beard and greasy hair.

  Of course I had been taught all about not getting into cars with people I didn’t know. If there’s one thing my parents and schools drummed into me from a young age, it’s stranger danger. For whatever reason, I didn’t think of any of that at the moment. I was broke, I was tired, and I needed a lift.

  “Bennelton,” I said.

  “I’m headed that way.” The guy scratched his beard. “Hop in.”

  I got off the bench and started toward the pickup. As I was reaching for the door it vaguely passed through my mind that I was doing something not very smart. I popped the handle and climbed in. There were dirty old newspapers scattered on the floor under some rubber boots and a pair of yellow waterproof overalls. He must have been a fisherman or something. On the dashboard was a pack of Marlboro Light cigarettes. Reflected in the windshield was the cigarettes’ warning label. “SMOKING KILLS,” it said backwards in big black letters.

  The driver pulled out onto the road. There was a funny smell inside, but I couldn’t place what it was.

  “You live in Bennelton?” he asked.

  “Um, no. My grandfather does,” I said. “But I visit here a lot.”

  I was looking straight ahead. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the guy glance over at me. The stoplight in front of us was changing from green to yellow. We probably could have made it through before it turned red, but he slowed down.

  “Bennelton’s a nice town,” he said. “Quiet.”

  “Yup. That’s the way we like it.”

  When we stopped at the light, he reached for the pack of cigarettes on the dash and shook it with a flick of his wrist. A single cigarette popped out an inch or so—it was a smooth move, I’ll give him that. He lifted the pack to his mouth and plucked the cigarette with his teeth.

  I looked over at the guy and he smiled, the cigarette dangling between his lips.

  “You don’t care if I smoke?”

  “No business of mine,” I said back at him.

  He reached between us into the crack of the seat and dug out a blue plastic lighter.

  “What’s your name?” he asked me as the tip of his cigarette flamed.

  “Monica,” I lied.

  “How old are you, Monica?”

  “Seventeen,” I lied again.

  He nodded his head and made a clicking sound between his teeth. The traffic light in the other direction turned yellow. I snapped that door handle open and leapt out like I was on fire.

  “Thanks anyway,” I shouted, and slammed the door shut.

  The guy yelled something, but I didn’t hear what it was because I was racing back down the street as fast as I could to cover the hundred yards to the parking lot of the gas station. After coming all this way I really did not need to end up being raped and kidnapped by a psycho fisherman and left for dead on the side of some rural byway. When I got back to the Dead River Convenience store I was wildly out of breath. The guy behind the counter turned to look at me as I burst through the door.

  Last time I was inside I had noticed a pay phone in the corner of the store, over by where the motor oil was stacked, and I went right to it.

  Since I began on this trip, I had imagined walking up to my grandfather’s house, across his front lawn, then knocking on the door to surprise him, but apparently that was not to be. I was still breathing hard when I picked up the phone.

  I didn’t even know my grandfather’s number. I hung up and grabbed the big telephone book sitting on the ledge below the phone. The number was easy enough to find—there was exactly one Harold Willows living in Bennelton, Maine. I put in the last quarter I had and waited. It rang and rang and I began to panic. My grandfather and his wife were so old they probably didn’t even have voice mail. What if no one was home—what if they were away?

  I let it continue to ring while I tried to figure out what to do. I was going to have to call my parents. The idea of that sucked on many, many levels.

  And then someone picked up the receiver.

  “Yyy-ello!” a voice shouted into my ear.

  “Grandpa?” I called back.

  There was a pause. “Who’s this?”

  “Grandpa, it’s Lucy,” I said. “Your granddaughter. Remember?”

  There was another pause. Then his voice was so loud I had to hold the phone away from my ear.

  “Of course I remember. I thought maybe you were your grandmother phoning. I ran in from outside. Hello Lulu, what are you doing calling me up?”

  “I’m here,” I said. I was squeezing the receiver so hard my hand started to ache. “I’ve come to see you.”

  “Me? Is your father with you, and your mother and sister? Where are you guys?”

  “No, it’s just me. I came up on the bus.”

  “On the bus?”

  “Yeah. Well, three buses.”

  “That’s a hell of a trip. Where are you?”

  “I’m actually in Belfast.” I explained about falling asleep and missing my stop and how I was out of money and the not very nice bus driver—but not about the guy in the pickup truck. I was talking really fast; I couldn’t slow down.

  “Well, hold on now,” my grandfather said. “You wait right there. I’ll be out to get you in a jiff.”

  When I hung up the phone I was so relieved and excited I didn’t know what to do. I walked around the aisles of the store really fast without even seeing anything. Then I was outside, over by the road, looking up and down, then back inside the store. I wanted a Reese’s Cup, but I had exactly three cents to my name.

  I tried to sit on the bench by the road, but either it had bad memories of the guy in the truck or I was just too excited to sit still. After about a half hour, a car pulled into the parking lot and came right over to where I was standing. As it pulled up, the passenger-side window rolled down and there was my grandpa’s face, smiling out at me.

  “There she is,” he said, and opened the door to get out. My grandfather still moved pretty fast for such an old person. He was the spry, wiry type. He stood looking at me for a second—then he hugged me. I was kind of surprised by the hug; I don’t know what I expected. It’s not like he was the best hugger in the world; it was kind of a boney and hard hug, but nice nonetheless.

  He turned and opened the back door for me. When I got in, I saw that there was another guy in the driver’s seat. It was hard to tell exactly how old he was, but I got a feeling he might be younger than he looked. His hair was super messy and his beard was splotchy, as if it could only grow in certain areas. It made his face look like a partially mowed lawn.

  “This is Davis,”
my grandfather said. “He rents the apartment above the garage.”

  Davis reached his hand over the seat. He had a really strong handshake. “Hey,” he said. His voice was deep.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Davis works at the fish-processing plant,” my grandfather said.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I had no idea what they did at a fish-processing plant. Weren’t fish just fish, and you ate them? What had to be processed?

  “Oh,” was all I could think to say. “That’s cool.”

  “Not really,” Davis said. “But it pays the rent.”

  “Which is all that matters,” my grandfather said. Then he laughed and slapped Davis on the shoulder. Davis laughed a little too, but not as much as my grandfather. He pulled the car out onto the road and headed toward Bennelton.

  “I’m not driving too much these days,” my grandfather said. “My eyes. Davis here had just gotten home from work, so he was kind enough to zip me out to get you.” My grandfather was sort of half turning over his shoulder but not really looking at me.

  “Thank you for coming to get me. I wanted it to be a surprise, but . . .” I shrugged.

  “It certainly is a surprise,” my grandfather said. “What led to this momentous decision to come up here on your own like this?”

  Before I could answer, my grandfather spoke again.

  “Wait, do your parents know you’re here?”

  “Not exactly,” I said.

  I didn’t know what to expect at that point. I just hoped he wouldn’t put me back on the bus headed south. Instead, my grandfather burst out laughing.

  “I love it,” he shouted. He slapped his palm against his thigh a few times. “Your father never would have done something like that in a million years. Must come from your mother’s side of the family.” He was still laughing.