Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille
Page 35
Poul shook his head, hiding his tears by unbuckling the boots. He scraped his feet pulling them out. Later that day Dad would smear first aid cream on them, his eyes unfocussed, his hands shaking.
Poul left the boots on the beach and went into the woods to cry. He’d never been so scared. He’d never been so scared! And when he returned an hour later, Mom was walking up the shore, calling Neal’s name. “Where’s your brother?” She’d asked, her eyes already wild. “Weren’t you watching Neal?”
Poul rose from the lawn chair; he could feel the nylon webbing creases in his backside. Neal was six, he thought. Savannah is six. The two facts came together with inevitable weight. For years he hadn’t thought much about Neal’s death. Every once in a while, a memory would flare: the two of them talking late at night, after they were supposed to be asleep, the model airplane Neal had given him for his birthday, the words carefully inscribed on the back, For mi big brother. Luve, Neal. Neal trusted him, looked up to him, but most of the time Neal didn’t exist anymore. Then Savannah was born, and Neal came back, a little stronger each summer. Maybe that’s what Leesa sensed: the younger brother, dead within him.
Savannah is six, Poul thought, and Neal has been waiting.
He went through the cottage and made sure the screens were tight. It wouldn’t do for the house to be filled with mosquitoes when Leesa and Savannah returned. For a moment he held a pen over a notepad in the kitchen, but put it down without writing. A beach towel went over his shoulder, and he walked to the end of the pier. Standing with his toes wrapped over the edge, a breeze in his face, felt like leaning over an abyss. Beyond the drop-off, he saw no bottom. The big fish were there, the fishy mysteries he’d left to Neal.
He dove in, a long shallow dive that took him yards away without a stroke. Water rushed by his ears. Bubbles streamed from his nose. He came to the surface, treaded. From his shoulders to his knees, the lake was warm, a comfortable temperature perfect for swimming, but from the knees down it was cold. Neal hadn’t known how to swim, he thought. To even go on the pier, Dad had made him put on a life jacket, and Poul was the older brother. How many times had he been told to protect him, to watch out for him? And it didn’t matter what he’d been told, Poul wanted to keep his brother safe. At the playground, he listened for Neal’s voice. When someone cried, Poul stopped, afraid it was Neal. Loving his brother was like inhaling.
Neal went into the lake; he never came out. Neal must have hated him, Poul thought. At the end, he must have cried out for him, but Poul didn’t come. He didn’t warn him.
Poul swam deeper, put his face down, eyes open. Without a mask, his hands were blurry. Beyond them, blackness. How deep? Were there pike? He imagined a ghost catfish, its eye as broad as a swimming pool rising toward him.
But try as he might, Poul couldn’t drown himself. He floated on his back, letting his feet sink until his weight drew his face under, and just when the time came to breathe, he kicked to the surface. He couldn’t let the water in. Swimming parallel to the shore, he passed Kettle Jack’s, swam by dozens of cottages like his own until his arms tired. Each stroke hurt, his shoulders burning with exhaustion, but they never quit working. The lake let him live, and Neal never came up to join him. Poul waited for a hand (a small hand) to wrap around his ankle, to pull him down where six-year-olds never grow older. Instead, the sun moved across the sky until Poul was empty. Completely dull, drained and damaged, he turned toward shore, staggered up a stranger’s beach, and walked on the lake road toward his cottage, staying in the shoulder, where the grass didn’t hurt his feet.
If Neal didn’t want him, who did he want?
This far above Kettle Jack’s was unfamiliar to him, but the look was the same: long, dirt driveways that vanished in the trees below, or led to cottages camped along the shore. Old boats sprawled upside down on saw horses. Bamboo fishing poles leaned against weathered wood. Station wagons or vans parked behind each house. Towels drying on lines. Beyond, in the lake, sailboats cut frothy wakes; the wind had picked up, although he didn’t feel it much here.
He started walking faster. Leesa and Savannah would be home by now. He wondered what they were doing. Leesa never watched Savannah like he did. Her philosophy was that kids take care of themselves, generally, and it’s healthier for a child to have room to explore.
He hadn’t realized how far he’d swam. Way ahead, the tip of Kettle Jack’s pier poked into the lake. Maybe Savannah and Leesa would walk there to see Johnny Jacob’s kittens. But it was hot, and Savannah hadn’t swam yet. Yesterday she’d fished. Today she’d want to swim. He could see the scene. Leesa would pull into the driveway. Savannah would put on her swim suit to go out on the beach. She had sand toys, buckets, shovels, rakes; little molds for making sand castles. Leesa would set up a chair, lather in sun lotion and read a book. Savannah could be in the water now.
Poul broke into a jog. How idiotic it was to leave the cottage, he thought. No, not idiotic. Criminal. If vengeance waited in the lake, if some sort of delayed retribution haunted the cold waters, why would it care for him? Where would his suffering be if he drowned, like Neal, relieved of responsibility at last? He was running. Kettle Jack’s passed by on his left. It was a mile to his cottage. He’d swam over a mile! And maybe that was the plan: to get him out into the lake and away. Suddenly he felt as if he’d lost his mind. What was he thinking? What sane father would dive into the water away from his daughter? Savannah is six, he thought, and she needs her daddy.
The van was parked behind the cottage. Poul ran to the front, his breath coming in great whoops. Empty lounge chair. Sand toys on the beach. A child’s life vest lying next to the boathouse. No sign of her. He yelled, “Savannah!” as he went through the door onto the porch.
Leesa sat at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich. “What’s wrong with you?” she said.
“Where’s Savannah?”
“Puttering around in that raft I bought her. We had a heck of a time finding it.”
“I didn’t see her!” he said as he ran out of the kitchen.
Out front, he scanned the lake again. Boats in the distance. No yellow raft. He had a vision: Savannah paddling, looking at the bottom through the clear plastic. Sand, of course; she’d see sand and minnows. Then she’d move farther out, her head down, hoping for fish, not aware of how far from shore she was going. The water would get deeper. She’d be beyond the sand, where the depths were foggy and dark green. “What is that?” she’d think. A moving shadow, a form resolving itself, a face coming from below. The little boy from beneath the pier.
Poul pounded down the dock, scanning the water to the left and right. Leesa followed.
“She was right here a minute ago! I’ve only been inside a minute!”
At the dock’s end, Poul stopped, within a eye blink of diving in, but the water was clear as far as he could see. Even the sailboats had retreated from sight.
“Maybe she went to see the kittens,” Leesa said.
“With the raft? She wouldn’t go with the raft!” Poul’s voice cracked.
A bird flew by, wings barely moving. It seemed to Poul to almost have stopped. His heart beat in slow explosions. Leesa said something, but her meaning didn’t reach him, the words were so far apart. Then, a round shape pushed from beneath the pier. At first he thought it was the top of a blonde head, right under his feet, and it moved a little bit further, becoming too broad to be a head, and too yellow to be blonde. It was the raft. He could feel himself saying, “No,” as he bent, already knowing Savannah wouldn’t be in it. He tugged on its handle. It resisted. Who is holding on? It slid out. No one held it. Six inches of water in the bottom made it heavy.
“Savannah!” Leesa screamed. Then the bird’s wings beat twice and it was gone. Poul’s pulse sped up. The lake had never seemed so empty. He remembered Dad, who had stood at the end of the pier, mute, when they pulled Neal out. Now he stood on the same board.
A high voice called from the lake, a child. Poul looked up, his skin sudd
enly cold. It called again, and Poul saw her, lying on the diving platform a hundred feet away. Savannah.
He didn’t know how he got there—he didn’t remember swimming, but he was up the diving platform’s ladder, holding his weeping daughter instantly. She nestled her head under his chin and shook with tears. Before she stopped, Leesa arrived in the boat, and they both held her.
Finally, when Savannah’s crying had settled into a sob every minute or two, Leesa said, “How did you get out here, darling? You scared us so.”
Between shuddery breaths, Savannah said, “I didn’t mean to go so far, and I couldn’t get back. I paddled really hard, but I fell out. The wind pushed the raft away.”
She looked from Poul to Leesa, her eyes red-rimmed and teary.
“I swallowed water, Daddy. I couldn’t breathe.”
Poul swallowed. He could feel the snorkel in his mouth, the solid, leaden ache of water in his lungs.
Leesa gasped, “Thank God you made it to the diving platform. We could have lost you,” and she burst into tears herself.
Through Leesa’s crying, Savannah looked at Poul solemnly. “I didn’t swim, Daddy. The little boy helped me. He took my hand and put me here.” Savannah rubbed her eyes with the back of her arm. “He kissed my cheek, Daddy.”
Poul nodded, incapable of speech.
“He looked like the boy in your baby pictures.” She sniffed, but seemed more relaxed, her fear already becoming vague. “My eyes didn’t play tricks on me.”
Poul spent the sunset sitting on the end of the pier, his toes dipping in the lake, surrounded by the watery symphony. Aqueous rhythms beating against the wood, lapping against the shore. And fish. He sat quietly, and the fish came: a school of blue gill, scales catching the last light in a thousand glitters swirling in front of him and then were gone. Later, when the sun had nearly disappeared, a long, black shape glided by, its eye as big as a quarter, a long row of teeth visible when it opened its mouth. Poul had finally seen a pike.
He sighed, pushed himself up and found Leesa in the kitchen. She’d already put Savannah to bed in their room upstairs.
She looked at her coffee cup dully. It was almost hard to remember what he’d loved about her when they’d first met, then she turned her head a little and brushed back her hair, and for a second, it was there, a picture of Leesa when they were young. Before Savannah. Before coming to the lake had become so reluctant. The second disappeared.
He pulled a chair out for himself and turned it around so he could lean his arms on the back. She didn’t speak. Poul shut his eyes to listen to the woods behind the cottage. The air there was always so moist and living, but it didn’t penetrate into the kitchen. With his eyes closed, he could swear he was alone in the room.
“I want a divorce,” Poul said.
Leesa looked at him directly for maybe the first time in a year. “Why now?”
The low, slanting sun cut through the trees behind the cottage, casting a yellow light in the room. He knew that on the lake, now, it highlighted the waves, but didn’t penetrate the depths. Fisherman would be out, because the big fish, the serious fish moved in the evening. The evening was the best time to be on the lake, after a hard day of swimming, of hiking in the woods where he’d played with Neal, and just before they went to bed to tell each other stories until sleep took them, two brothers under one blanket lying head to head, and they dreamed.
Poul said, “When you realize a thing is bad, you’ve got to let it go or you’ll drown.”
About the Author
James Van Pelt teaches high school and college English in western Colorado. He has been publishing fiction since 1990, with numerous appearances in most of the major science fiction and fantasy magazines, including Talebones, Realms of Fantasy, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Analog, Asimov’s, Weird Tales, SCIFI.COM, and many anthologies, including several “year’s best” collections. His first collection of stories, Strangers and Beggars, was released in 2002, and was recognized as a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association. His second collection, The Last of the O-Forms and Other Stories, which includes the Nebula finalist title story, was released in August 2005 and was a finalist for the Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award. His novel Summer of the Apocalypse was released November, 2006. His third collection, The Radio Magician and Other Stories, was released in 2009. James blogs at http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com
Publication History
“Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille” first appeared in Quantum (1999)
“Father’s Dragon” first appeared in On Spec (2001)
“Just Before Recess” first appeared in Flash Fiction Online (2008)
“O Tannenbaum” first appeared in Weird Tales (1998)
“Night Sweats” first appeared in Realms of Fantasy (2001)
“Teaching” first appeared in Star Anthology #1 (1998/1999)
“Working the Moon Circuit” first appeared in Footprints (2009)
“Plant Life” first appeared in Aberrations (1993)
“That He Might Yet Find the Unknown” first appeared in Altair (2000)
“Floaters” first appeared in Talebones (2008)
“The Road’s End” first appeared in Realms of Fantasy (2006)
“One in a Thousand” first appeared in Altair (2000)
“Rock House” first appeared in Talebones (2006)
“Mrs. Hatcher’s Evaluation” first appeared in Asimov’s (2012)
“Far From the Emerald Isle” first appeared in Analog (2002)
“Howl Above the Din” first appeared in Talebones (2000)
“No Small Change” first appeared in After Hours (1991)
“The Saint From Abdijan” first appeared in Extremes, Darkest Africa (2002)
“Ark Ascension” first appeared in Analog (1999)
“Working Pushout” first appeared in The Third Alternative (2001)
“Notes From the Field” first appeared in 3SF (2002)
“Classroom of the Living Dead” first appeared in Daily Science Fiction (2011)
“Savannah is Six” first appeared in Dark Terrors 5 (2000)
Fairwood Press books by James Van Pelt
The Radio Magician
Summer of the Apocalypse
The Last of the O-Forms
Strangers and Beggars
Copyright
Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille
A Fairwood Press Book
November 2012
Copyright © 2012 by James Van Pelt
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Fairwood Press
21528 104th Street Court East
Bonney Lake, WA 98391
www.fairwoodpress.com
Front cover image by Elena Vizerskaya
Book design by Patrick Swenson
ISBN13: 978-1-933846-34-7
First Fairwood Press Edition: November 2012
Printed in the United States of America
eISBN: 978-1-61824-991-3
Electronic version by Baen Books
http://www.baen.com
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