“I want to go.”
“And you can’t go.” Clark summed up, “So that’s a problem.”
Sher peered down at a patch on the tent. “It’s better to address a problem than stress over it.”
Bailey stood up and addressed his father, “Please can I go flying with you?”
Clark set down the patch kit and looked at his son. “No.”
“Laylea is going.”
The puppy in question perked up from Woodford’s bed.
“You’ll be at school and your mom at work. Lee is too young to be left alone all day.”
Bailey almost stomped his foot which would have gotten him into real trouble with his mother. He took a breath and tried to put his distress into words. “She got hurt last time,” he said. “She’s going to be sick.”
“Now that seems like a problem you can address.” Sher smiled at Bailey. She patted his head with a greasy hand and went back to her tinkering room.
“I can’t promise she won’t get hurt,” Clark said. “And yeah, the airsickness was pretty unpleasant but she was little. It probably won’t be as bad this time.”
Bailey turned to look at Laylea. She flicked her ears at him. He gave her the Hand of Stay and stomped out of the room. Laylea tilted her head at Clark.
“Don’t know, little girl. But whatever happens, it’ll be interesting.”
She barked and laid her head down on Woodford’s butt.
Clark packed up the repaired tent, the tarp, and his lights and toiletries in the hotel bag. Sher came out of the tinkering room to cook dinner so Clark could spread his maps out on the dining room table and work the math aloud. Laylea stood up on his leg. Clark picked her up and showed her how he was making a flight plan and copying his plans into a code that only Sher could read so she could find him if he didn’t come back. Bailey wandered in. He set a canvas bag on a chair and climbed up after it.
“Hey kiddo, what’s that?” Clark set aside his pencil.
“It’s a better first aid kit. In case you guys get hurt with mom all the way down here.” Bailey leaned over and traced the line of the mountains with a finger. “I’m still working on Laylea’s kit. What are you doing?”
“Plotting a flight plan. We’re looking at the weather reports—”
Bailey tickled Laylea’s belly. “Can you fly anything, Dad?”
He thought about it. “Fixed wing, yeah, probably. I’d need to glance at the instruction manual.”
“But you can’t fly helicopters?”
“Well, I haven’t been in one since your . . . since I can remember.”
“What are these circles?” Bailey tapped a finger on the possible landmarks.
“We need to pick some ground checkpoints and it’s a little more complicated because I’m deliberately not flying the optimum route.”
Bailey’s head fell forward onto the charts. He snored.
“Is that your mother calling you?”
Bailey popped up. “Yes! I hear her too.” He raced out through the kitchen door.
“Am I boring you?” Clark asked the little girl lying belly up, chewing on his pencil.
He took it from her and looked over his notes again. He leaned on his forearms and marked a few more options, lakes he knew of from previous flights, a bare ledge too rocky to land on but easy to spot from his maximum altitude. He was caught up in his thoughts, trying to keep the numbers straight in his head so he was startled when Laylea stood up to lean on his face. She licked his forehead and his eyelids.
He gave her a little love and lifted her to the far side of the map. “I’m working here.”
Laylea blew air through her teeth. She stood and padded over the map to sit against Clark’s chest. He smiled and continued quietly searching for the most convoluted route his gas tank could afford.
She barked and stood.
“What?”
At the sound of his voice, she sat again, eyes on his pencil.
"You like my voice?"
Laylea barked and looked up at him.
Clark kissed the tip of her nose and started talking through his thoughts as he figured the distance, time, gas, and coffee needed for their trip. Laylea didn’t interrupt him again.
After dinner, Clark carried Laylea with him into the small closet he’d turned into an office and radio room. He set her on the table as he fired up his old HAM radio. While it was warming up, he stepped out to snag Laylea’s baby towel off the couch. He came back to find her tilting her head at the headphones hanging off the reticulated lamp arm. Clark dumped the towel on the table and slipped the cans over his ears. He chatted with some strangers for a bit while he watched Laylea rearrange her towel using her teeth and occasionally a paw to drag it into a comfortable bed. She turned around seven or eight times and dropped onto the towel, curled into a tight ball over her tucked under tail. With one last look at Clark, she shut her eyes.
Clark fiddled the dials with his left hand and gave a shout out to Jay Doe. He settled in to wait, repeating his call periodically. He watched his baby girl, wondering at how quickly she could fall asleep. Laylea startled herself, waking at a little snore, then settled again. Shortly her eyelids began twitching. One paw flapped from the wrist, maybe as she tried to trap the Rick’s cat in her dream.
The radio crackled.
“Jay Doe to Captain Crunch.”
“Crunch here. Getting soggy. Where you been, Jay?”
They verified the powwow landing coordinates. Jay passed along last minute special orders. Clark approached the subject of Hardknock carefully.
Jay showed no such reserve. “He won’t being attending, Captain. I’ve a gorgeous black bear skin to trade for his order.”
“I haven’t got anything near worth that. Just his scrip, his beverage of choice, and a few small toiletries.”
“Not bringing him any books this time, are you?”
“That’s a negatory, Jay. No reading materials.”
“Good. He’s like a teenage girl and a telephone with that thing.”
“Come back?”
“He doesn’t ever put it down.”
“Hey Jay, think maybe you had a sister?”
“Open channel, Captain.”
“Affirmative. Sorry. You have anything else on your list?”
“Will you be bringing your copilot again, Captain? The families all asked after her when I went around for their orders. I think the Disneys are interested in taking her off your hands.”
Clark looked over at the puppy. Laylea yawned, her long pink tongue curling up at the tip. He smiled. “Yeah, she’s coming with me. But she’s my co-pilot. Can’t fly without her.”
“Maybe you can find a more useful type for them.”
“I’ll keep an ear to the ground.”
“For me too, as long as you’re looking. Bigger, stronger, but just as sweet as LG if you can manage it.”
Clark chuckled. “She’s yours if I find her.” He picked his pencil up and scratched behind Laylea’s ear with it. “Need any other sweets from the pantry?” he asked, offering to get Sher on the line to answer any clinical questions.
Jay paused for a moment and then replied, “One kid in the cottage, Captain. Breadcrumbs are sparse. He’s an Obi one.”
Clark wrote this down. “Over and out, Jay. We’ll see you in the place at the time with the things.”
Two days later after Clark had gathered the additional supplies, Bailey helped him buckle Laylea’s bed into the truck. The kid cracked the lid of a shoebox. Inside he’d stacked a sour cream container inside an empty butter tub. A bottle of water sat beside them. He pulled out a medicine bottle with nail holes poked in the cap.
“Ginger. I ground it and some is liquefied.”
Clark examined the bottle. “How do I get her to eat it?”
“You don’t.” Bailey took it back. “She smells it. You can see if she’s looking green and hold it up to her nose. It’ll calm her stomach. If it loses its odor by the time you’re coming back, you c
an open the lid and smoosh the shavings a little and that should refresh it. You want me to show you how to open the lid?”
“Let’s just see if she likes it, wise guy.”
Bailey giggled and reached through the window to hold his homemade diffuser under Laylea’s nose. The puppy jerked back at first but then she darted her head forward a few times to check it out. She seemed to be okay with the ginger so Bailey put it back into the box on the seat beside her bed.
Clark swung Bailey into a bear hug. He swept Sher into it when she came out to the garage with a new and improved set of flashwipes for the plane.
“I understand how the flashwipe on our street sign deters people from looking at it again or really reading it at all, but how does this help me fly under the radar?”
“The sequence works on technology as well as human brains. Your plane won’t show up clearly on radar or pictures and I improved the three-sixty for direct visual contact deterrence.”
“And you’re pretty.” Clark kissed his wife.
She waited with Bailey by the bicycles while he got in the driver’s seat and buckled in, setting the flashwipes beside him with exaggerated care.
Sher leaned in the passenger side window. She set her handwritten instructions on the dashboard and tucked teddy lizard in the bed with Laylea. “You’ll be careful with the new guy?”
“I promise.” Clark crossed his heart.
“Fair winds.”
“I love you.”
Laylea couldn’t settle in the cockpit as Clark loaded the plane and performed his checklist. She paced around her bed once he had it buckled into the seat. She tried to fluff the stuffing. She jumped down and paced on the floor until he needed the space. She climbed over to his seat and then up onto the instrument panel. From there she could see out the window and calmed a bit. But Clark lifted her from the perch and set her back into her bed when he started up the plane.
He took Bailey’s bottle from the shoebox and offered her a sniff. Laylea took it from him and buried it under a bolster. Laughing, he showed her the instructions written on the lid of the box. She tasted it. He cracked the water bottle and poured a little into the sour cream container. Bailey had magic markered “Water” on the side.
“Go easy on this.” He set it on the tarp-covered boxes lining the passenger side floor.
He showed her the butter tub. Bailey had written “Barf” on the outside of this one. And inside on the bottom.
“Try to aim for this. Okay?” This one he left on the seat next to her bed. He keyed the radio, “I’m about to take the runway.”
Laylea barked at him. Then curled up into a tight ball of dog and covered her eyes. When they started rolling, she wiggled around until her nose disappeared under the bolster, near the ginger bottle. Clark got them in the air as smoothly as he could.
Fifteen minutes into the flight Laylea let out a growling sigh and rolled onto her back. Clark reached over to rub her belly but she swatted at his hand, threatening to chew it off. She climbed off the seat and lapped briefly at the water. Then she hopped back up and stood up on the door. She could just barely see out the window.
When she tried to climb up the side of the door for a better view, Clark reached over. He took Laylea in his right hand using what he thought of as the crane grip. Her belly rested on his arm, a leg on either side. His palm and fingers supported her chest. When he felt her relax, he swung his arm across his chest so that Laylea could see out of his window. With a sigh, she leaned forward and pressed her nose against the plexiglass.
Clark’s bicep was just starting to seize up a few hours later when he noticed Laylea had leaned her whole face on the window. Steam blocked his view out that side. He lowered his hand and slid her onto his lap without waking her. She stretched and dreamed but didn’t wake again until they were safely on the ground.
“An entire leg with no barfing.” He woke her with a hand cupped around her muzzle. “I’m very hopeful. Now, this is a quick stop. Find yourself a bathroom and don’t eat anything Sher would disapprove of.” Clark lifted her down into the grass and let her run free while he found a rock to prep in his sling. She immediately leaped after a possible grasshopper and tripped, rolling under the plane. She danced over to the far side of the wheels to relieve herself. Then she ran around the plane a few times just to stretch her legs. On her third lap she broke off to growl at a pale boy approaching from the nearby woods. She tried to jump sideways to get between Clark and the stranger but tripped and went rolling again.
Despite the bag on his back and his stick thin legs, the kid dropped to a crouch to see her better. He reached out and Laylea jumped back when she saw his hand. The pinkie finger ended in a rough scar before the second knuckle. He didn’t notice her reaction. His ice-blue eyes couldn’t have gotten a very good look at her before he bounced back up. A shaggy translucent ponytail hanging down his back kept bouncing as he jogged in closer. “We didn’t order one of those did we?”
“Nope. That’s my in-flight entertainment.” Clark shook the boy’s offered hand. “Here, let’s empty your bag.”
Clark and the boy quickly transferred sixty pounds of smoked salmon from the large bag balanced over the kid’s shoulders to the cooler of dry ice Clark had ready on the plane. He dragged the appropriate crate out of the back and set it on the ground with a bag of corn meal.
“I’ve got your scrip here in the cockpit.” Clark reached into the bag he kept beside the pilot’s chair.
He stopped at the sound of a choked sob. When he turned, the perpetual motion boy had frozen in place. His head started shaking and he found his voice.
“Don’t need the Lacosamide anymore.” Another strangled whimper brought Laylea to Clark’s feet. The kid spun away and began stuffing supplies into his empty bag.
Clark rolled the vial up in its paper sack and tucked it into a side pocket of his flight bag. When he turned around, the crate was empty. He glanced down at Laylea. Her eyes were glued to the boy.
“I’m sorry.”
The kid didn’t look back. He was still tying up his pack as he thanked Clark and jogged back toward the woods. He was in such a rush that he didn’t notice when something fell out of the bag. Laylea saw. She barked and ran toward the parcel. The boy turned and shouted in alarm as Laylea picked up the giant Snickers bar with her teeth and ran it to him. She stood up on his leg so he wouldn’t have to bend as far and upend the bag on his shoulders. He took it from her gingerly. She didn’t recoil at the short finger this time.
“Thank you.”
Laylea barked and ran back to attack a grasshopper near Clark’s feet.
“That was food, you doofus. You’re a dog.”
He looked up to see the boy standing still with the candy bar in his hand, watching them. He waved and the kid ran off. “A normal dog would have eaten it.”
Laylea looked up at Clark and listened for a clue to what he wanted. She sat. She lifted a paw. Clark bent down to shake the proffered paw and she got her a cookie from his right hand pocket. His glorious right hand pocket. When she was done with the cookie, she noticed Clark swinging teddy lizard in her face. She lunged for it and they had a good game of keep away there in the field around the plane.
Chapter Sixteen
Typically Clark spent a flight singing or mentally listing all of the things he knew about himself. He could fly any plane he’d seen. He loved movies and the smell of popcorn made him smile while the taste didn’t thrill him all that much. Plants of all sorts thrived under his care but each time he dug in the dirt was like his first time. He loved Sher with all of his heart. He would give everything in his power to give Bailey a normal life. And he could eat Caprese salad for every single meal and die a happy man.
It was a short list. So he would add the more mundane. He preferred paste to gel when it came to dental care. He believed anyone who didn’t agree that Harry Connick Jr’s rendition of anything was far superior to Old Blue Eyes’ was off his head. He didn’t care for chocolate. Han
shot first.
And then he would sing Sher’s song to make himself feel better.
But with Laylea in the cockpit, Clark found his typical buoyant spirit maintaining the fore. He didn’t sink into dark thoughts. During the next leg of the short journey to the powwow, Clark explained to her what each of the instruments told him. He explained to her how they differed in other planes he’d flown since Sher had reactivated his long-term memory storage. He explained to her about the magic Bernoulli fairies who ran on the clouds with their steel-toed combat boots for kicking birds out of the way. They wore tutus and plaid shirts and all of them, the girls and the boys, had thick beards. He explained how the Bernoullis held the plane up. And then he explained the math of Daniel Bernoulli’s Law of Differential Pressure.
Laylea watched everything he did. She loved his chatter and Clark took cues from the tilt of her head and turn of her ears on whether to expand on a subject or move on. She seemed most interested in things he could point at.
He stopped talking when he needed to focus on their second approach. The selected rendezvous provided only a tight landing field. Not for the first time, Clark dreamed of somehow adding hovering capability to his little Cessna. Laylea lay down when he stopped speaking. In his focus, Clark didn’t really notice her kneading his thighs. And when they hit the ground, he didn’t dare look down to see where she went as she crawled off his lap. The sound alerted him. She made it to the appropriate tub to throw up the cookie.
“Maybe I shouldn’t take you flying.” Clark sighed as he shut the plane down and unbuckled. “This could be animal cruelty.” He climbed out of the plane and reached for her.
Laylea backed away.
“What’s wrong, little girl? Don’t you want to get out and stretch your paws?”
She whimpered a little and curled up on the far side of her bed. She stared at Clark until he got the message.
“You’re not getting out. Okay. I’ll leave the door ajar if you change your mind.”
Laylea tilted her head.
“Ajar means open.”
He washed out the butter tub, replaced it, and went on about the business of trading items with a young couple. All these two had to give Clark were envelopes. Clark opened the passenger side door to put them in a locked box in the floor of the plane and Laylea tumbled over to the floor on the pilot’s side so he couldn’t reach her. She relaxed when he was back in his harness with the doors shut. Once they were in the air she climbed over to his lap and tried to get on his right hand so he could crane her up to the window. This was a longer leg. She divided her time between staring out the window and at the instrument panel. For a little while she even lay on her back in Clark’s lap and stared up at his face as he chattered at her.
WereHuman - The Witch's Daughter: Consortium Battle book 1 (Wyrdos) Page 11