Flight Dreams

by Michael Craft

  Dear Mark. Went to a cat show here in Phoenix this weekend. Wanted to relive something you and I shared. Went alone, stayed all day, came home in a funk. Saw some remarkable Abyssinians—thought you’d want to know. I think of you often (would you believe always?) and wonder if and when we’ll see each other again. Hoping to hear from you—Neil.

  Manning hasn’t written back. He hasn’t called, though he’s often reached for the phone, even dialed the area code.

  I’ve been busy, he tells himself, trying to justify his reticence, but knowing better. How long would a phone call take me? Ten minutes max if it goes well, less if it doesn’t. So it’s not a matter of having time. It’s the … emotional expenditure, the Pandora’s box I’m not ready to open while there’s so much else to deal with.

  He has less than two weeks left to locate a woman who has eluded him for seven years—and only nine days to prepare for a court appearance concocted to vilify his investigation. What, then, has consumed his working hours for the past month?

  Ethiopia. The crisis at long last appears to be winding down, owing largely to the efforts of an outspoken suburban woman, mother of one of the hostages, who has mounted a headline-grabbing campaign of “personal diplomacy” that has frustrated Washington and tantalized the public. Every edition of the paper now brims with Ethiopia stories—breaking news, sidebars, local-angle features—and Manning’s share of these assignments has diverted his attention from the Carter case.

  He has persisted, though. Every spare minute at the office, and much of his own time, has been spent searching for evidence—or even clues, threads, tidbits—that would either incriminate or exonerate the diverse characters on his dwindling list of likely suspects.

  He was quickly able to eliminate Archbishop Benedict, Father Matthew Carey, and Timothy Chatman from active consideration. While each would gain from Helena Carter’s demise, Manning concluded that none of these men had the direct means to perpetrate such a crime.

  Still on his list are Arthur Mendel, Margaret O’Connor, and Humphrey Hasting. All three had plausible motives. Arthur and Margaret had the means. And Humphrey Hasting’s unsubstantiated finger-pointing at Arthur Mendel serves only to cast darker suspicion on himself. But this is little more than circumstance, all inconclusive.

  And what of Nathan Cain? His publisher hobnobs with the archbishop, engages in cocktail chat with a bombastic reporter from a rival newspaper, and orders his own star reporter to ignore the known facts of a major local story. Could Nathan Cain conceivably be behind it all—a mastermind of abduction and murder? If not, is he trying to influence the outcome of the story in order to help the Archdiocese hierarchy collect on the will? Or is he simply, as Gordon Smith suggested to Manning back in October, simply exercising his “perverse sense of gaming”?

  Lacking hard evidence of foul play, Manning concludes, as before, that Helena Carter must still be alive, but he’s no closer to proving it than he was in the beginning. And time is running out.

  “Mr. Manning?”

  Manning returns Neil’s note to his pocket and swivels in his chair to find Gordon Smith’s secretary standing behind him with a strapping young man whose owlish glasses and muscular build give him the air of a boyish Clark Kent. Manning clears his throat as he rises to greet them, wondering what mission has coaxed the woman out of the managing editor’s office, since she rarely appears on the floor of the newsroom.

  “Mr. Manning,” she repeats, hesitates, then continues, “Mr. Smith asked me to introduce David Bosch to you. David will join us next month as an intern.”

  “It’s a real honor, Mr. Manning,” says the eager kid, squaring his broad shoulders as he crunches Manning’s hand. “This is awesome. We’ve studied your stuff in J-school.”

  “Just finishing up?” asks Manning, flexing his blanched fingers.

  “Yeah,” says David, “one more semester at Northwestern. But the best training in the world will be right here, on the job. I was blown away to find out I got the internship—and now this. Who’d believe I’d actually end up working at Mark Manning’s desk? Too cool!” The kid doesn’t notice Manning’s sudden pallor. “Where are they putting you—‘upstairs’ somewhere?”

  As Manning mumbles, “That’s sort of … up in the air,” his phone rings.

  “We can see that you’re busy,” says the secretary, sensing the effect of their visit. “I’d better take David down to personnel.”

  “Great to meet you,” the rookie tells Manning as the woman leads him away. “See you in January!”

  Manning musters a halfhearted smile and waves a cursory farewell as he answers the phone.

  The man’s voice on the line sounds nervous. “Mr. Manning? I’ve never telephoned a newspaper before, but I read your article this morning about the heiress, and I thought I should call. You see … my wife has dreams.”

  “Your wife,” Manning repeats dryly.

  “She dreams about things that might be useful to your stories.”

  “Really?” says Manning, feigning interest. “Tell me about them.”

  “I’d be delighted, Mr. Manning.” The voice is now effervescent, any trace of nervousness vanishing. “This all started several weeks ago …” the tale begins in a gossipy tone.

  Manning dangles the receiver by its cord, holding it at arm’s length, and lowers it into his wastebasket. He sits back in his chair and breathes deeply, clearing his thoughts, then removes Neil’s note from his pocket to read it again. He stares at the paper, but his eyes do not focus on the writing. His breathing stops, and time is suspended for a long moment. Then he blinks, inhaling, and ponders reality. The Journal’s management is preparing to give his desk to some upstart kid. They already assume he will fail at Nathan Cain’s mandate.

  His fists clench, crumpling the note. He wads the paper into a tight ball and flicks it into the wastebasket, where it glances off the receiver. The little voice pauses at the intrusion, then jabbers happily on.

  Far from Chicago, in the rectory that stands next to a church in the desert, Father James McMullen sits at his cluttered dining room table. The piles of paperwork have grown in recent months, and he hasn’t made much headway. With Christmas so near, there’s a slew of administrative minutiae that must be resolved while leading his flock toward their celebration of the miracle birth. The priest turns an envelope in his hands—clearly, it isn’t Christmas greetings. So he tosses it on the stack of unpaid bills.

  It is midmorning, and down the hall, Mrs. Weaver clatters whatnot in the kitchen. It’s too early for lunch—too early for tuna, thank the Lord. No, by the smell of it, she’s baking cookies. The phone rings. Twice. Four times before she grabs it. She must have had her hands in the dough.

  “Telephone, Father.”

  Grateful for the interruption, he hoists himself from his chair and lumbers off to the kitchen. There are indeed cookies in the works, an ovenload of Christmas treats set out to cool on the counter top. Turning in time to catch the priest eyeing them, Mrs. Weaver reminds him, “Those are for the children, Father,” then she resumes dolloping out the next batch from a big chipped red bowl.

  The priest picks up the receiver that dangles from the wall phone near the doorway. He glimpses the approaching holiday on the single page still hanging from the wire spiral of the church calendar. “Merry Christmas,” he says. “This is Jim McMullen.”

  Listening to his caller, the priest’s face blanches. He steps around the doorway and into the hall, hoping the housekeeper won’t hear him. “I told you never to call me here.”

  The voice on the phone hisses into McMullen’s ear, “This crap has been all over the news lately. We’ll have to act faster than we planned.”

  Mrs. Weaver turns on the water to rinse her hands in the sink. The voice on the phone grows louder, spitting an obscenity. The priest inhales sharply, both shocked and angered by the invective. With hand on chest, he feels the pounding of his heart—he’s sure it skipped a beat. “That’s enough,” he says into the
phone. “Behave yourself. I’ll talk to you later.”

  With attempted nonchalance, he steps back into the kitchen and hangs up the phone, but Mrs. Weaver can tell he’s shaken. Wiping her hands on her apron, she asks, “Everything all right, Father?”

  “Just another”—he fumbles for the words—“overanxious creditor.”

  “Ah.” She nods. There’s been a fair share of those calls lately. Twisting her neck to check the clock over the refrigerator, she tells him, “You’d better get a move on, Father. You’ll be late for the assembly. I’ll have lunch ready when you get back.”

  “Goodness,” he says, having forgotten the town meeting, “I’m on my way.” He crosses the kitchen, swings open the screen door, and steps outside.

  A breath of cool air freshens the desert this morning with nature’s tenuous promise that the oppressive heat of perpetual summer has indeed waned. The sky is radiantly blue—like a backdrop, the artificial handiwork of some overcaffeinated set designer—and there is no smog from the distant city to cloud the horizon beyond the mountains. Any day now, it could rain. Then the desert will bloom, and this place will seem like paradise, like a lost land found, a covenant fulfilled.

  The people of Assumption sometimes forget their holy calling during the long, sweltering months that test their faith and divide them into cranky factions. But the cool morning has spruced their zeal and renewed their sense of unity. They are, after all, a people of God.

  Father McMullen is thankful for the break in the weather. God’s timing is good—this is the third Monday of the month, the morning when the community gathers in the shabby school hall for its regular town meeting. As both spiritual and temporal leader of Assumption, Father McMullen presides at these forums, noting with alarm lately that their tone has grown contentious. Striding down the center aisle of the packed assembly, he prays with apprehension, Dear Lord, preserve us in our mission. Let calmer heads and peaceful hearts prevail today.

  He steps onto the rickety dais and turns to greet the people. Their chatter instantly ceases, and they respond like schoolchildren with a lilting “Good morning, Father.”

  “Let us pray,” he tells them, and they rise amid a clanging of metal folding chairs. “God, our Father,” he intones mechanically, “be with us this glorious morning as we seek to find Your ways in a world that is often hostile yet forever beautiful. Make us worthy to act as servants in the home You have created for us. Make us one in mind and spirit. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.” He waves his hand in a loose blessing and asks the people to sit.

  The only sure thing about these meetings is that they begin with a prayer; other than that, the agenda is left to the whim of the assembly. What can of worms, wonders the priest, will be opened this morning? Several hands already flutter, seeking recognition. A gangly young man, the choir director, itches to speak. “Yes, Ed?” says the priest.

  Ed bolts up from his chair near the front of the hall and turns sideways to address the crowd. “Christmas is coming,” he says in a loud but wavering voice. “It’s only four days away, and we have a problem—the organ. Or I should say, the lack of an organ. The one we have doesn’t work and can’t be fixed. Now, traditional church music—the kind of music we all expect to hear in Assumption—is almost exclusively organ music. So we are faced with two unappealing options: Either we go a capella again, or we substitute a piano.”

  “No!” wails an old man, rising from his chair to speak without being recognized. “We’re Catholics here,” he bellows, amazed that he should have to state something so obvious. “Catholics don’t play pianos in church—not real Catholics. Pianos are for dance halls, not churches. Pianos are for heretics. They’re for, they’re for… Protestants. My God,” he says in a horrified whisper, crossing himself as the thought enters his mind, “first we’d have pianos, and then—before you knew what hit you—guitars.” He plops in his chair, quaking at the image he himself has conjured.

  An uproar swells through the hall, with a cross fire of discussions and an anxious crop of raised hands. Father McMullen recognizes a young woman who cradles a sleeping infant in her arms. As she rises, the crowd hushes itself so as not to wake the child.

  In a clear, soft voice, she says, “I think we should just keep things simple. Some of us feel awful strong that we shouldn’t have a piano in church, and I guess we don’t have the money for a new organ, so I think we should just go on without either. The Mass is beautiful. We don’t need to jazz it up. Let’s keep it simple.”

  The room bursts into discussion as the woman sits down. The baby wakes and adds its crying to the din. Some of the crowd support the young woman, saying that she talks sense and that her solution is the only way to keep everyone happy. Others insist that they won’t be happy at all if they don’t get some real music into the church—disputing among themselves whether a piano is an acceptable substitute for an organ. Father McMullen makes no attempt to bring the meeting to order, preferring to let the assembly argue itself out. He will gladly go along with any resolution that the parish finds acceptable.

  The priest notices Owen Foss sitting calmly in the crowd with his hand raised, not taking part in the discussion that roils around him. Owen is mature but not elderly, has never shown particular interest in musical matters, and the priest has always judged him levelheaded. “What’s on your mind, Owen?” calls Father McMullen above the turmoil.

  Startled by the priest’s voice, the crowd falls silent and turns to watch Owen, who strokes his chin while rising. “I just think it’s kinda funny, Father, for everyone to be frettin’ over Christmas carols when there’s so much other stuff—big stuff—that needs our attention. Just look around you, everybody. Look at this pitiful excuse for a town hall—a dirty lunchroom in a run-down old school. The whole building’s a disgrace, and we need to replace it. But first, we’ve got to do something about health care. There’s lots of kids here, and old folks too, but no doctors. Why, we almost lost Father McMullen when he had his attack last year. We’ve got to build a hospital, a full-blown medical center! And when we’re through with that …”

  “Now hold on, Owen,” says Father McMullen through a nervous chuckle. “That’s quite a wish list you’ve got there. Let’s not allow our worthy ambitions to get in the way of earthly practicalities. We’ve already gotten some initial estimates, and the hospital you describe would cost almost fifty million dollars. Good Lord, that project alone would entirely deplete our expected endowment.” He suddenly stops, as though he has let something slip.

  Astounded, Owen asks the priest over the murmur of the crowd, “What are you talking about? That’s only half the money—it’s common knowledge.”

  Near the back of the hall sits the woman with a novel, which lies unopened in her lap as she watches the progress of the meeting with an icy stare. Disgusted, she rises, turns, and walks out of the room, noticed only by the priest.

  As she descends the front stairs of the school and walks off toward the town square, Father McMullen rushes out of the building after her. Winded, he calls, “What’s wrong?”

  She stops in her tracks to look him straight in the eye. “These people make me sick,” she tells him, “bickering and pouting about what they want for Christmas, carrying on like a bunch of kids. I’d call you all hypocrites if I didn’t realize that I must be the biggest one of all—or the biggest fool. I have half a mind to put myself on the next plane out of here.”

  “If I thought you meant that … you know you could break my heart.” He pats his ticker woefully, reminding her of his delicate condition. With an infectious grin, he coaxes a smile out of the woman.

  “I’m sorry,” she tells him, unable to remain angry. “God’s given us a fine cool day, and we should thank Him for it by enjoying it.”

  “So true. The simple pleasures of clear sky and birdsong are gifts we too often overlook.” A brownish bird dives from the church steeple and caws horribly as it passes over them. A snotlike circle of birdshit lands next to Father
McMullen’s shoe. The woman stares at it, laughing inwardly while pretending to appreciate the priest’s enraptured monologue. “The gifts of nature,” he continues, “are among the sweetest of our Lord’s bountiful kindnesses. He showers us with fruits of the field and the bread of heaven.” The priest shifts his weight and steps on the slimy bread of heaven. The woman’s eyes bulge. “But God’s gifts are only one manifestation of His love for us. The trials, the crosses He sends us, are of course His most special blessings.”

  “Jamie, you’re a good, holy man, and I love you like a true Christian, a brother—but I’ll have none of that ‘suffering is a blessing’ nonsense.” She beads him with a squint from beneath her sharply penciled brows, then tells him, “You’d better get back to your flock before they eat each other alive. I’ve got to go tend my own little herd.”

  Tuesday, December 22

  10 days till deadline

  MANNING STANDS IN THE middle of the street that runs straight between two rows of white houses. This is everyone’s mental picture of everyone else’s hometown. Though no one ever grew up here, it is the childhood setting that everyone feels deprived for having missed.

  Manning is dressed to run again. He has been lax about it lately, and guilt gnaws at the lining of his stomach. He wonders if he’s fit for the task that now faces him.

  The sun shines intensely from somewhere in the crystal sky, and he knows that his run will soon overheat him. He straddles the line of elastic tape in the middle of the road and removes his tight black T-shirt, his loose white shorts, and stands naked except for his running shoes. Aroused by the warmth of the sun against his body, he answers without hesitation the urge to stroke his penis to full erection. He wonders without caring if he is watched from behind the delicate lace curtains that flutter in the windows of the big clapboard houses.