Last Witch Standing (Mountain Witch Saga)

by Jonathan Grimm

  Katie pulled back. The plane edged up, then back.

  “Okay, good. A little bit more, Katie.”

  Katie obliged and the craft rose into the air at a perfect 45-degree angle.

  Jimmie punched Dan lightly in the shoulder. “She’s better than you.”

  “Okay, Katie, I’m gonna turn it for you.” Dan adjusted the ailerons and the plane turned back towards them before reaching the street. He allowed his sister to circle the plane several times before landing it for her.

  “Good job,” Dan said.

  “Yeah, Katie. You should be an astronaut!” Jimmie grinned.

  “Listen, we’d better head back,” Dan said. Mrs. Edwards was in the front yard of their house waving at them.

  Chapter 4

  Sunday, April 2, 1972

  Earth

  “What are you doing?”

  Dan flinched. “Don’t do that!”

  “Do what?” Katie asked.

  “Sneak up on me.”

  “I’m not sneaking!” Katie looked up at her brother.

  “I’m straightening the top.”

  “Are we gonna fly it today?”

  “How? How are we going to fly it, Katie?” Dan turned towards the window, where the rain beat down in torrents. “It would be ruined.”

  “Don’t they fly airplanes in the rain? It was raining when we went to pick Dad’s friend up from the airport and they were flying planes then.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Those were real planes. This is a model. The rain would kill it. If the wind didn’t tear it apart first.”

  “I am not stupid!” Katie put her fists on her waist.

  “Sorry. You’re not stupid, Katie. Could you please go and let me work on this alone?” Dan forced a smile.

  Katie hopped off the bed and left the room without a word. A few moments later, Dan could hear his little sister on the stairway making plane sounds. She was probably pretending to be a plane taking off.

  “Dinner, children,” their mother called from downstairs.

  Dan put his model down. The imperfections had been filed out, the decals straightened, and a second coat of paint added. It looked good. Now, if only he could fly it. He looked out the window. The wind whipped the nearest limbs of the oak in the front yard against the house; rain came down in a flood, nearly horizontally. Even if, by some miracle, the weather cleared, it would still be too wet to risk flying.

  “Darnnit!” He stood up and started for the stairs.

  The places were set. That should have been Dan’s job, but his mother probably recognized his preoccupation with the model airplane and discouragement at not being able to fly it.

  The macaroni was still steaming, and after saying grace, Dan served himself a large helping. In the flower decorated crockpot mini sausages kept warm, the aroma of the barbecue sauce marinade inviting. For vegetables, they had a mix of corn, peas and carrots.

  “Katie, slow down,” Patricia Edwards said, after watching her daughter skewer one sausage after another and put it into her mouth.

  Katie put her fork down and chewed and swallowed what remained in her mouth. She was a definite carnivore, Dan observed for the hundredth time.

  “You want to play a game?” Katie turned to Dan.

  “No.” Dan put another bite of macaroni in his mouth.

  “Now, Dan, you can play one game with your sister.” Patricia Edwards covered the remaining macaroni with tin foil.

  “Mousetrap! I have a new idea I want to try.” Katie stood up and moved towards the closet that contained the family’s board games.

  “Great. Katie gets to make a new creation.”

  “Now, remember you were four once,” his mother reminded him.

  “Four and a half,” Katie corrected.

  “Four and a half,” Patricia repeated.

  “Okay. Just one game, and she can’t move the pieces until it’s her turn.”

  “I don’t!” Katie protested.

  Dan had to grab a stool from the kitchen to reach the game, which was on the top shelf of the closet, lodged firmly under Battleship and Candyland. He wiggle it sideways to loosen it, before pulling it out with one hand and using the other to prevent the top games from sliding off. Finally, he had it and brought it to the coffee table. Katie opened the box and started setting it up while he closed the closet and returned the stool to the kitchen.

  An hour later, Dan was behind four mice. Almost every time the cage lowered it was on one of his mice; rarely did it land on one of Katie’s. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were cheating some way, Katie.”

  “I’m not cheating. Just winning.” Katie grinned. “We can play Which Witch if you want.”

  “No way! You slaughter me on it.”

  The scent of popcorn drifted in from the kitchen. “Mom’s making popcorn,” Katie said.

  “Good.” Dan didn’t look up. He was concentrating on the board. Only one of his mice remained.

  A few minutes later, Patricia Edwards entered the living room carrying a large yellow Tupperware bowl filled with popcorn. The butter and popcorn smell was too inviting to ignore and Dan looked up from the board.

  He dipped his hand into the steaming popcorn. A moment later, he lost his last mouse and with it the game.

  “Which Witch,” Katie said.

  “Okay,” Dan answered. May as well lose another game while he ate popcorn—

  Chapter 5

  Houston, Apollo 11 . . . I've got the world in my window.

  - Astronaut Michael Collins

  May 1, 1972

  Earth

  “Oh, my goodness!” Katie scooted closer to the television set.

  “That’s really Mars?” Dan asked.

  “Must be,” Keith Edwards answered from the couch. Beside him his wife leaned forward in her seat.

  “I never thought I’d see something like this in my lifetime. First the Moon and now Mars.” Patricia stared at the pictures from the Mars probe, Mariner 9. The black and white picture on the screen was the central caldera of the Martian volcano Olympus Mons.

  “We’re gonna go there,” Katie announced.

  “No, dear. I don’t think we are. Not for a long while,” her mother said.

  “I’m going there!” Katie turned to her parents. “Me!”

  “Well, that settles that. Bring me back a few rocks, would you, please, Katie.” Her father smiled down on her and held his hands out. She walked to the couch and sat beside him. He put his arm around her and they continued watching.

  “Well, no canals, no green men. Too bad,” Patricia said.

  “It looks a lot like the moon.” Dan sat on his haunches by the side of the television opposite Katie.

  “Let’s go flying,” Dan said when the news segment ended and the screen turned to a picture of a tank with soldiers, rifles at the ready, following behind, entering a city, while the television anchor gave commentary on the state of the war in Vietnam.

  Katie jumped up. “Let’s go.”

  “Ok, kids, but be back for supper,” their mother said.

  Dan loaded his toolbox and Katie grabbed the plane. They had a routine going now. He could carry more stuff in his box if she carried the model. He trusted her with it. Heck, she flew it better than he did now. It had become as much her project as his.

  “Let’s take the thermometer off this time.” Dan gestured towards the baby thermometer they had taped to the fuselage at Katie’s suggestion. She had read somewhere that temperature drops at higher elevations and wanted to test it out. So far, they hadn’t found this, but their device was crude and they probably didn’t fly high enough. Also, as the craft descended the thermometer would return to ground temperature. Katie was working on a modification that would capture the temperature at maximum elevation. Dan couldn’t see how they could do this, but he wasn’t about to bet against his little sister’s ingenuity.

  “I want to try something new.” Katie held the thermometer and a roll of electrical tape in her hands. “
If we put it up like this.” She held it vertically for Dan to see. “It may not change so quickly when it lands. You can land it quickly and I can run and check the temperature before it changes.”

  “Why do you want to do that, anyway? Who cares what temperature it is fifty feet up?” Jimmie stood between them, hands on his hips. “Let’s just fly it. I want to try a barrel roll.”

  “I don’t know if that would work, Katie,” Dan said, ignoring Jimmie’s comments.

  Katie picked up the plane and started rolling tape around the fuselage. It started buckling in the center from the tightness.

  “She’s gonna break it.” Jimmie pushed Katie away and she stumbled and landed on the pavement.

  Dan hit him. They both stared at each other, then Jimmie picked himself up and walked away without saying a word, got on his bike and rode home.

  Dan looked up at the sky. “We’d better go, Katie, it’s getting late. We will try your idea with the thermometer tomorrow. Promise.”

  Katie picked herself off the ground and wiped the back of her yellow dress.

  Dan took her hand and they walked home together, him carrying the toolbox in his left hand, Katie’s hand in his right. She held the airplane.

  ***

  “Eat one more, Katie,” Patricia said at dinner.

  Katie nodded no and pushed the dish away from her and laid her head on the table.

  “Somebody needs a nap?”

  “I think so,” Katie mumbled, but did not raise her head.

  “Then you’re excused.” Patricia walked her daughter upstairs and tucked her into bed.

  “Not feeling well, sweetie?” Keith Edwards knelt by her bed when he returned from work that evening. He put the back of his hand against her forehead. “A little hot. I think you’re coming down with a cold.”

  “No. I can’t be sick, I have things I want to do,” Katie whispered.

  “We can’t always choose such things, Katie. You’ll feel better soon and whatever projects you’re working on will be waiting for you.” He patted her shoulder and moved her blanket up.

  Downstairs, Dan watched Columbo – a show about an unassuming detective who solved murder mysteries by intelligence and cunning – the kind of series his little sister would like when she was old enough to watch it.

  “Is she feeling better?” Dan asked his mother when she came downstairs.

  “She’s sleeping.”

  “I’m going to make a surprise for her. She wants to hook the thermometer up to the plane. I think I’m going to get a dowel and hook it up for her vertically, as she wants.”

  “That would be very nice. It will give her something to look forward to when she gets better.” Patricia went into the kitchen and Dan finished watching the show.

  It wasn’t a school night, and he could stay up later and watch more television, but he went to his room anyway. He wanted to work on the thermometer for Katie.

  An hour and a half later, tired, but filled with a sense of accomplishment, Dan Edwards attached the contraption to the P-51. He made a halter from an old backpack strap with a tripod at the top to fit the dowel in. Instead of being taped to the side, it would be securely fastened in the center of the fuselage, towards the front of the plane so balance would not suffer. He couldn’t wait to show Katie. This would perk her up.

  He put his tools away, turned the lights off, and got into bed. Tomorrow, early in the morning, he would test the device out and smooth out any bugs. Then present it to his sister. Then there was Jimmie. He’d have to make up with his friend, but better to let a day or two pass first. Maybe he shouldn’t have hit him, but the guy couldn’t push Katie around like that.

  Sleep came quickly and Dan dreamed. He was preparing to fly the P-51 when he looked up. His little sister was waving down at him from the woven basket of a car-sized hot air balloon. Dan waved back, wondering where his sister had gotten such a neat craft.

  Dan awoke to screaming. First it was at the periphery of his consciousness that someone was yelling and he had to find out what it was, then a second, earsplitting scream jolted him awake.

  He sat up in bed. Someone was screaming down the hall. In the crack underneath his door, the hall lights were on.

  He got out of bed. At the door, another shriek pierced the air, and Dan fumbled at the knob. It was his sister. What was happening? Should he grab his baseball bat? Was there an intruder tormenting her?

  A figure passed by his door; he could tell from the footfalls it was his mother. Dan made another attempt at the knob and the door opened. He only caught the back of his mother’s nightdress as she entered Katie’s room.

  “Mom! What’s going on?”

  When she didn’t answer, Dan followed her into his sister’s bedroom. Katie lay on the bed, drenched in sweat. Her father was holding her and attempting to reassure her.

  Katie’s eyes were wide and Dan knew she didn’t see him or register the environment in her room.

  Keith turned to his son. “Your sister is very sick. Your mother and I are going to take her to the hospital. You will need to stay here. Grandma is on her way to sit with you.”

  Dan didn’t answer – he just stared at his sister who lay in agony, prostrate on the bed.

  The next moments were a blur; Dan’s father hustling him out of Katie’s room and into his own, their mother taking Keith’s place at their daughter’s bedside.

  Dan stared out the window. He could hear his grandmother stirring downstairs. Their station wagon was gone, loaded up with his little sister and on its way to the hospital. Dan’s grandmother had told him not to worry and try to sleep, but he wouldn’t sleep until he knew Katie was all right. What on earth had happened? He knew she hadn’t been feeling well that night, but this went far beyond sick. Nobody told him this, but Dan knew his sister was in moral peril, in a fight for her life.

  The dark turned to early morning and the sun rose as Dan paced by his window. There had been only one call from the hospital – by his aunt who said they didn’t know anything yet.

  He didn’t eat breakfast. The smell of pancakes and bacon repelled him. Still, he should talk to his grandmother, help comfort her as well, but he couldn’t do it. Thoughts of Katie in her little yellow dress chasing after his P-51 Mustang clouded out all other thoughts.

  At ten that morning, the family’s station wagon pulled up. He ran outside. His father was helping their mother out of the car. Katie wasn’t with them. Dan knew his mother well enough to know she would not have left Katie alone at the hospital. They didn’t have to tell him. He ran to his mother and the three of them hugged.

  Chapter 6

  Friday, May 5, 1972

  Earth

  Though it was only 8:30 and the funeral wasn’t until 11:00, cars were already parked by the curb by the Edward’s house as Dan exited carrying his airplane.

  One foot in front of the other. You can make it to the park.

  He knew what he had to do. The model had been just as much Katie’s as his. Never again could he fly it; simply looking at it brought him to tears.

  A slight breeze stirred the leaves of the trees in the yards as he made his way to the park. The sky was a cool cerulean blue. Somewhere, a bird was singing.

  What could he do now? Was she really gone? Forever?

  Meningitis. One moment she was playing at the park with him, then she was screaming in agony. Then she was dead.

  Though it was a Saturday morning, Dan had to wait at the crosswalk as one after another car passed – each going too fast on the usually quiet street for him to get through. Finally, a pedestrian pressed the Walk button further up the street and the resulting red light enabled Dan to finally cross.

  Dan hesitated at the corner before the park. It was not visible from there, but the moment he turned, the large expanse would open up before him and it would be there in all its glory. Swings, slides, parking lot, fields of freshly mowed, viridian green grass.

  Finally, he took a breath and turned. The park was empty. Dan
set the plane on the concrete, placed his thumb over the carburetor and turned the propeller counter-clockwise until it was primed. Then he set the starter plug over the engine and pressed down and turned. The engine jumped, and the props turned, before it sputtered. Again he tried. And failed.

  This couldn’t happen. It was the only time it really mattered. He had to get it in the air. Concentrate. Prime it again and work carefully. You are too hurried.

  Dan placed his thumb over the carburetor once more and turned the props counter-clockwise. Then he let it set for a moment before applying the starter. This time, as he turned the device, the engine roared to life. Good. It must not have been primed well enough the first time.

  He let it idle for a few minutes before engaging the propeller and gunning it. The plane taxied across the lot, picking up speed as it went. Dan raised the elevators and it eased into the air. His movements at the controls were now smooth, well-practiced and efficient, the task at hand blotting out the images of his little sister chasing after it, her golden hair billowing in the wind.

  As the P-51 gained altitude, Dan breathed in the fresh, morning air. It steadied him enough to focus on the final task.

  Four times he circled the park. One pass for each of the years of his little sister’s life.

  He remembered staying with his grandparents when his mother went to the hospital. How he was not allowed to see his new sister until days later – hospital rules – when she came home. Katie’s first words. How she grabbed his collar and giggled when she was only a year old.

  What things she could have done! Grandma and Grandpa called her their “little Madame Curie” after the Nobel Prize winning physicist. At four and a half, she was brilliant. What would she be like as a high school student, had she lived? An adult? He had no doubt she would have won her own Nobel Prize – perhaps dozens.

  Dan circled the park with the craft a fifth time for the birthday she would not have. He even had her birthday present picked out – a chemistry set their parents agreed he could buy her if she only used it under supervision. It lay under his bed, unopened, not yet wrapped.