4.3.11: Sturdivant
This is it, Walker thinks. If he’s going to do it, he’s going to do it now. He struggles desperately against his bonds, but they’re too tight for him to escape.
And then Walker thinks he detects some kind of mental shrug, as if Billy has somehow realized that no amount of contemplation is going to resolve his doubts, and he’s just going to have to go ahead and do something.
I knew we shouldn’t have driven into Sturdivant that night, Walker thinks. I just knew it. That’s when it all started, right after Sunshine ran in that race. I felt uneasy about it then, I remember just as clearly as if it were yesterday, and I should have said something about it then. Well, I did say something, didn’t I? But I should have been firmer about it, I should have insisted. But I don’t know, Nathan would have done whatever he wanted to do anyway, I mean, who am I to tell him what to do. But still…
And then Billy’s hand starts to tighten, ever so slightly. He’s pulling the trigger, Walker realizes. And the prospect of a world without Nathan is suddenly too much to bear. He strains mightily against the ropes that secure him to the railing, but to no avail. He begins to rock his massive frame back and forth, hoping that perhaps he can pull down the railing, and perhaps the rest of the porch with it, like Samson in the temple. The old porch shakes, but it doesn’t break. They just don’t make them like this anymore someone had once said admiringly, he remembers, although he can’t place who or when. No sir, they just don’t make them like this anymore.
“No!” Walker screams. “Don’t do it! Don’t shoot him!” He can feel the others staring at him, and he feels strangely guilty. He knows that flagrant, violent displays of emotion are frowned upon – self-control is a major-league watchword in this group – but to hell with that, he thinks. I just don’t care anymore. I’d do anything to save Nathan. Anything. I’ll kill that scum-sucking son of a bitch if I can lay my hands on him, he thinks, eyeing Billy murderously. I’ll flat-out kill him.
But if Billy even notices Walker’s outburst, he shows no sign. He continues to stare at Nathan, nearly demonic in his intensity, with only the slightest tightening of his right hand – his gun hand – to indicate that he’s not in a complete trance.
And then, with a sudden movement, he flicks the gun barrel up sharply. And since the business end of the barrel was tucked under the bandanna, Walker is amazed to see the blindfold lift off Nathan’s head and spin merrily away. Keeping its shape, it circles up into the air, nearly reaching the porch roof before it begins its lazy descent.
“Why did I do that?” Billy screams. Then he appears to freeze, and Walker grins as he figures out what’s going on: Billy’s staring directly into Nathan’s eyes, and he’s been making such a big deal about Nathan’s powers that he’s willed himself into a nearly catatonic state. But seemingly with his last ounce of strength, Billy manages to turn his head and clap his hands over his eyes. Unfortunately for him, he’s neglected to remove the pistol from his right hand, and so he gives himself a sharp whack just over his right eye. “Oh, shit!” he screams – and as Walker’s grin widens into a full smile, Billy stumbles down the porch steps and spouts something unintelligible as he runs off toward his truck.
The disciples are silent as they watch Billy race across the lawn, he’s cursing and sputtering, waving his arms like a madman. Then someone giggles nervously, and then someone else laughs. I was so scared, someone says, and then they’re all talking and laughing, laughing and talking. I really thought he was going to shoot Nathan. I thought he was going to kill us all. Did you see how scared he looked when he scurried off the porch? Nathan, are you alright? Is anybody hurt?
And they’re so relieved by their sudden deliverance from Billy’s reign of terror that nobody but Walker notices that Billy walks up to the truck, but he doesn’t actually open the door and get in. Only Walker sees Billy go around to the bed of the pickup. Only Walker sees Billy pull something out of the bed of the truck, something the size of a small jar or a soup can. Only Walker sees Billy begin to walk back toward the house, not nearly as quickly as he departed just moments ago, but with a grim and foreboding determination. Only Walker sees the frantic struggle in the cab of the truck. Only Walker sees Stevie thrash wildly, somehow gain control of the knife from Eddie, slash desperately at the ropes that bind his ankles together, fling open the door of the truck, and begin to run frantically after Billy.
But everybody hears Stevie’s blood-curdling cry as he runs at Billy, the knife clutched awkwardly in his hands at arms’ length in front of him, his wrists still bound firmly together. “BIIIILLLLLYYY!” he screams. And again: “BIIIILLLLLYYY!”
And then, of course, all of the disciples look up to see what’s going on. And it looks for all the world like Stevie is going to drive the knife right through Billy’s back with all of his strength, like it’s a bayonet. But at the last possible instant, Billy steps lightly to the side, like he has eyes in the back of his head. And Stevie, lunging into nothing but air, stumbles and falls to the ground, hard, the knife under him. He shudders once, and then he lies still.
“BHAKTI!” someone yells, in a strange echo of Stevie’s cry just moments ago. “BHAKTI!” But Stevie doesn’t respond.
And Billy just keeps coming, inexorably, ignoring Stevie’s attack as if it were of no great consequence. “I’LL TEACH YOU TO LAUGH AT ME!” he screams rabidly, his eyes wide, spittle running down his chin. He walks up to the bottom of the porch steps. “NOBODY LAUGHS AT ME! NOBODY, DO YOU HEAR ME? NOBODY!”
He’s gone crazy, Walker thinks in horror. He’s gone right over the edge.
There’s no telling what he might do now.
And while Walker and the other disciples watch in horror, Billy pulls a cigarette lighter from his pocket and lights the short length of the cord that extends from whatever it is that he’s holding in his hand. Putting the lighter back in his pocket, he reaches down, grabs a grapefruit-sized rock, and flings it toward the house.
It’s all happening too quickly for Walker to figure out what’s going on. His first thought is dismay that Billy has ruined one of the neat circles of black stones that ring the flower beds that dot the front yard. It took us the better part of a week to plant those flowers, Walker remembers, and now they’ve been run over and torn up in just a matter of minutes. And I arranged those rocks myself. Each circle, he recalls, consists of thirty-six painstakingly positioned, perfectly sized fragments of volcanic stone…
One of which, Walker realizes, has been hurled in an arc that will bring it dangerously close to his head. He ducks, but he’s misjudged the trajectory of the stone, which misses him and the other disciples by a wide margin and crashes through the window behind them.
Good thing he missed us, Walker thinks, relieved, even as shards of glass shower down around him. That rock could have done some serious damage if it had hit anyone. Good thing his aim was off.
But then, as he watches Billy transfer the burning object from his left hand to his right and rear back to throw it, Walker realizes with a sickening certainty that Billy had hit exactly what he was aiming for.
And then it seems like everything is happening in slow motion. The jar, or whatever it is, leaves Billy’s hand, marking a lazy arc through the morning haze, spinning end over end, flashing fire as its glowing fuse swings in and out of view. It spins slowly over the heads of the disciples, who track it in stunned silence. It whirls dreamily into the house, spinning silently through the space that was a window only a few seconds ago. Impossibly, as if it’s deliberately picking its way, it finds the narrow seam between the curtains and sails past them, finally shattering on the wooden floor with an inappropriately friendly and musical tinkle of glass.
But there’s nothing friendly about the whoosh that follows the sound of the broken glass. There’s nothing slow-motion about the flames that start to lick at the curtains. And there’s nothing musical about the screams from the terrified figures who sit on the porch with their arms tied to the railin
g.
And Billy, after a satisfied last look at the spreading orange glow, saunters jauntily back to the truck – stepping neatly over Stevie’s prone form – starts the engine, roundly curses at Eddie for letting Stevie escape, and chugs noisily away into the rolling hills of the Connecticut countryside.
4.3.12: Twenty-Six Thousand Feet
“Señor Kendal?”
G.W.’s head jerks up sharply. Jesus, he thinks, I must have nodded off. “It’s open, Manolo,” he says, trying to sound more awake than he feels. “Come on in.”
“Señor Kendal, Captain Minifred asks me to tell you that we are preparing to land in Hartford. He asks that you…”
“I know, Manolo.” Please ensure that your seat belts are securely fastened, G. W. thinks. And return your seat backs and tray tables to their full upright and locked positions.
“Would you like me to wake Señora Kendal?”
“No thanks, Manolo, I’ll take care of it. You go on back downstairs.”
“Thank you, señor.”
“And leave the door open. I just may come on down to the cockpit for the landing.”
As he watches Manolo disappear down the carpeted metal rungs of the spiral staircase, G.W. notices that the report that he’s been reading is still clutched in his hand, he’s managed to hold on to it even in his sleep. He flips the papers onto the desk, sinks back into his chair, peels off his wire-rimmed reading glasses, and rubs his eyes. This working-all-night stuff, he reflects, isn’t as easy as it used to be. Hell, twenty years ago I didn’t think twice about taking a night flight and working straight through – and that was on a commercial plane. In coach. With everybody around me watching a movie, or snoring. And then I’d go to a meeting the next day, not a wink of sleep under my belt, and I’d still be as sharp as a tack.
But now, here I am in the office of my own private 747, with all the comforts of home, and the sun only peeked out about an hour ago, and I’m drifting off already. I guess I must be getting soft.
Or old.
Of course, partying until two A.M. might account for at least some of the way I feel. But when I was younger, that wouldn’t even have slowed me up a lick.
Well, what the hell. We’ll be back up in the air in just a few hours, there’ll be plenty of time for me to catch up on my sleep on the way to Qen Phon.
But right now, I guess I better mosey on back into the bedroom and wake up Barbara Anne. She’ll be meaner ‘n a snake after getting only three hours of sleep – but she’ll be a whole lot madder if I don’t wake her up.
G.W. grins, remembering the one and only time, several years ago, that he had decided to let Barbara Anne sleep through a landing. It had been a perfectly clear morning – no clouds, not even a trace of a breeze – and Minifred was damn good at landing the plane with no more of a bump than you might expect from a Cadillac rolling over a railroad track. But this time, as luck would have it, just as the big bird’s giant tires kissed the runway, one of them blew out with a loud bang. The plane had lurched violently to the side, skidded off the runway, and stopped rather precipitously in a muddy field.
The plane, G.W. is pleased to remember, had suffered no damage. And he and the other passengers – the top executives of three Nigerian oil companies – had been shaken up but not injured.
Of course, G.W. and the Nigerians had been in their seats, their seat belts securely fastened, their seat backs and tray tables in their full upright and locked positions.
Barbara Anne, on the other hand, had been sound asleep. Years later, she told G.W. that she had been dreaming that she was a young girl again, trotting languidly through a serene meadow on Misti, her favorite filly, heading back to the stable after an invigorating romp in the hills surrounding her daddy’s ranch. She was blissfully happy. The sun was shining, the field was filled with waves of brightly colored flowers that rippled in the cool breeze. Misti tossed her head proudly as she pranced through the bluebonnets, Indian paintbrushes, and black-eyed Susans.
And then, in a flash, without warning, everything was wrong, she was falling, grabbing desperately for something to hold on to. But unlike the times that she had awakened with the false sensation of falling, this time it was only too real. The first lurch of the big plane knocked her clean out of bed and sent her sprawling onto the cabin floor. It had all happened so quickly that she was still mostly asleep when the plane came to its sudden stop, seconds later. And so she was barely able to subsequently recall the way her limp body had rolled and tumbled its way across the cabin, her head narrowly missing an oak nightstand just before she crashed into the far corner of the room.
And she was still dazed, more from sleep than from pain, when G.W. frantically rushed into the cabin. She had looked up at him from the corner, more puzzled than hurt, and said, I’m sorry, Daddy, Misti threw me, it wasn’t my fault, I was being careful, honest I was. And she burst into tears.
But the cobwebs had cleared just minutes later, even as G.W. tried to console her, and she became furious, as angry as G.W. had ever seen her. You son of a bitch, she screamed, slapping him in the face as the curious Nigerians looked on from the doorway. How could you let me land without a seat belt on? Are you trying to kill me?
And although it had been anything but funny at the time, G.W. chuckles now as he opens the door to what he likes to call the “upstairs bedroom” to differentiate it from the two guest bedrooms downstairs in the main cabin. The upper deck of the 747 – which had held twenty-four business-class seats, a small galley, and two tiny bathrooms when the plane was part of the Texas Skyways fleet – is divided into an office and the bedroom in which Barbara Anne now sleeps. Both of the rooms are small but comfortable. The bedroom even features a shower compartment and a modest wet bar.
When G.W. had first added the jumbo jet to his fleet, he had spent nearly two million dollars to refurbish it. He could afford to spend that much because he had acquired the plane for free. He never tired of telling and retelling the story to friends and associates alike – and over the years, his foresight and business acumen had increased dramatically with each retelling, until it had become a nearly mythical event.
It seems that G.W. was having lunch in the Skyline Room at the Petroleum Club one rainy May day when he ran into Joe Cleary, a vice-president over at Fort Worth Bank & Trust, an old friend whom he had not seen for several months. During the course of the conversation, Cleary complained about the difficulties he was having as the court-appointed receiver for Texas Skyways, the Fort Worth-based airline that had recently filed for bankruptcy.
I’m trying to unload five planes, Cleary groaned. I’ve got to raise some operating capital so the damn company can stay afloat for a while, but used planes are tougher to move than used cars. I’ve got four DC-9’s, and I’m talking to four different airlines about them, and I know they want them, and the price is a steal, I’m just about giving the damn things away, but I just can’t get them to close the damn deals. I think they’d all like to see Skyways bite the dust more than they’d like to get some bargain-basement airplanes. And then I’m trying to move this damn 747 – no one even wants to talk to me about that bus, not with business as bad as it’s been.
Tell you what, G.W. had said. You set me a good price, and I’ll take them off your hands. All of ‘em, the 747 too. Assuming he was being kidded, Cleary had laughed. No, I mean it, G.W. said. Oh, come on, Cleary said, these aren’t cute little baby jets like those Lears you fly around in. What are you going to do with five commercial airliners?
Maybe I’ll start my own airline, G.W. said. And while G.W. knew that he had absolutely no intention of going into the airline business, he also knew that Cleary couldn’t afford not to take him seriously. Not with Skyways in the desperate straits it was clearly in.
And where are you going to get the bucks to buy these aircraft? Cleary had wanted to know. Do you have any idea of how much these beauties cost? If these babies were new, you couldn’t touch one of them for less than five million. Did you kno
w that?
Actually, G.W. didn’t have even the foggiest idea, but he wasn’t about to admit that to Cleary. Instead, he just pointed out that these particular babies were not new.
Cleary still looked dubious. Look, he said, I know that the oil business is flat right now. I haven’t seen your balance sheet lately, but I did see your last quarterly statement, so I know for a fact that Kendal Oil just can’t afford these planes, new or used. So where are you going to get your hands on that kind of money?
That’s easy, G.W. had grinned. I’m gonna borrow it from you.
Cleary had laughed, but in the end, FWB&T had indeed lent Kendal Oil a cool ten million dollars to buy the planes. And G.W. had turned right around and sold the four DC-9’s to the same airlines that Cleary had been negotiating with. And since he sold them for two-and-a-half million apiece, the proceeds of the sales retired his debt at First Dallas – leaving him with one used 747, free and clear. Which, if it wasn’t the world’s most luxurious private jet, was certainly the largest.
֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍ ֍
“Barbara Anne?” G.W. says softly, touching her bare shoulder. Her hair had once been as bright as Jillian’s is now, G.W. remembers – and while it has darkened somewhat over the years, it’s still silky and radiant. And how does she keep her skin so soft? He tenderly strokes her face with one finger. “Wake up, honey,” he says. “We’re fixin’ to land.”
She looks so pretty, he thinks. And so peaceful.
“Leave me alone,” Barbara Anne mutters thickly and angrily. As G.W. knows all too well, waking up is not one of the things that Barbara Anne does gracefully. Especially when she’s had only three hours of sleep.
“C’mon, baby,” G.W. insists. “You can go on back to sleep after we touch down.”
“Go fuck yourself.” Barbara Anne – who rarely, if ever, uses profanity when she’s fully awake – curses like a sailor whenever someone tries to awaken her before she’s ready.
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