The Four Corners of the Sky

by Michael Malone

  Clark slammed out of the house in a temper so uncustomary for him that the aunt and niece looked at each other stunned. He didn’t come home till late that night and strode past them straight to his room.

  But the next morning he was back in the kitchen, slowly making coffee as usual. He raised his mug when they sat down to breakfast. He said, “I guess the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” He took Annie’s hand. “You want to join the Navy?”

  The young woman squeezed his hand affectionately. “You joined the Army. You thought it was right to go to Vietnam.”

  He moved his hands away to his glasses, took them off, put them back on. “I was wrong, Annie. There was nothing right about it. Nothing.”

  She noticed his hands were old, freckled. “Yes. I want to fly jets. D. K. says I’m really good.”

  “Of course you are.” He kissed her hands, one, then the other, pressing them together. “It’s just…” He sighed. “You want to fly, fine. Fly tourists to Heathrow, fly college kids to Cancun.”

  She pulled away. “I want a chance to do something special and the Navy’s my chance. Sam! Tell him it’s my life.”

  Clark folded his napkin. “I know it’s your life. That’s my point.” He left the kitchen.

  Sam called an old friend, a state senator, about Annie’s applying to Annapolis. The senator arranged a nominating letter. Jack Peregrine’s daughter became the flyer that she had always assumed her father had never become himself, just as she’d assumed he’d never swum around Manhattan, or won a Silver Star, or beaten Minnesota Fats at nine-ball, or almost sold her to gangsters for $25,000 dollars, or studied with Einstein—unless he’d misheard Einstein’s theory of relativity and thought E=mc2 meant that nothing could ever be true.

  ***

  At Destin Airworks on the outskirts of Emerald, Sam, Clark, and D. K. huddled under the overhang. The wind suddenly swung back like a boomerang, bringing rain again, blowing the black eagle banner sideways above the hangar. Annie untied the lines from the wings of the Piper Warrior. The plane was old but—as D. K. said—“If you keep your parts oiled, old can be better than new.”

  D. K. was much grayer than when he’d first begun to teach his prize pupil; his tight cornrow braids, even his once sable-brown skin, had grayed. And his torso had so fattened from decades of being confined to his wheelchair that he wore nothing but black pajamas all year like, he said, “the fuckin’ Viet Cong.”

  Now that Clark and Sam had seen the latest air traffic weather readout, they were urgently trying to stop Annie from leaving for St. Louis until morning.

  “I continue to blame the two of you for this whole thing,” Clark told Sam and D. K. “If it wasn’t for you two, she wouldn’t know how to fly a plane.”

  Sam said, “Oh shut up, Clark. If it wasn’t for the two of us, you’d have her still riding a tricycle.”

  “That’s a real slow way to St. Louis,” laughed D. K.

  Annie called from under the plane. “Just keep talking among yourselves if it makes you feel any better.”

  “Fine,” sighed Sam. “If you’re flying…fly.”

  Chapter 18

  Flight

  Lifting himself in his wheelchair to ease his back, the crippled vet said maybe it was just as well that his legs were numb because everything else had started to hurt. “Getting old sure isn’t for sissies.”

  Staring glumly at the weather radar on D. K.’s small screen, Clark mumbled, “Isn’t getting old what we want Annie to do?”

  D. K. admitted that Annie’s insistence on taking her small plane up in this rain, when no commercial planes were flying, was “Mustang but shaky.”

  “‘Mustang’ meaning foolish bravado?” asked Clark.

  D. K. stroked his grizzled cornrows. “There’s a lot of bravado rusted in gook at the bottom of the China Sea. Bad day, you get hosed, you deep-six fifty million bucks worth of A-6E without a cloud in the sky, so what the fuck, who knows?”

  Clark looked dubiously at the black whirling clouds. “I hope you do. Exactly how dangerous is it?”

  “Don’t ask me, Clark. Dina fell down four little steps and she was dead the next morning. I knew this old guy, flew in the 303rd, Hell’s Angels, out of England, 364 combat missions by 1945. Not a scratch on him.” D. K. shrugged, shoving his wheelchair over to the Piper Warrior and calling under the wing. “You done under there? You check it all again?”

  “Done.” Annie crawled out from where swirling script still faintly spelled King of the Sky. She wiped her hands on an old towel and handed the vet her checklist. Then she took her uncle aside. “Clark, you want to know something, don’t ask D. K., ask me.”

  “You’ll just say you can do it.”

  “’Cause that’s the answer. The answer is, I landed a fifty-two-thousand pound Super Hornet fighter jet in force-three winds on the deck of the USS Eisenhower when it was rolling in twenty-foot swells. That’s the answer.”

  “Annie’s got the stuff,” D. K. called over agreeably.

  “Excuse me.” Clark pointed at the wheelchair. “You had the stuff, according to you, D. K.”

  D. K. winked at his star pupil. “In St. Louis, whatcha wanna bet, they won’t be firing rockets at her.”

  Sam patted Clark’s arm ironically. “‘We’ve got that going for us.’ But, D. K., is the King of the Sky mechanically sound for a long trip?”

  Annie made a comic choking noise. “Sam, you’re a woman who’s owned—just in the twenty years I’ve known you—a Gremlin, a Pinto, and a Yugo, and you’re asking about good mechanics? Ha!”

  “It is what it is.” D. K. spun away in his wheelchair, calling to Sam to help him throw on the runway lights. “Go, Annie P. Goode!” he yelled over his shoulder.

  Clark masked his distress by giving Annie a wry hug. “If this is good-bye, can I have your Porsche?”

  “No. It goes to Georgette. What do you need a Porsche with a souped-up eight for? You never go over forty.” Annie tossed the duffel bag into the plane along with the tote bag of food Sam had packed for her. “You okay, Clark?”

  “I baked you a cake. You know how long it takes to squirt icing for ‘Happy Birthday, Annie’ out of a soggy paper cone? Too long. That’s why your cake says ‘Happy B’d’y, A.’ I figured, know what? She’ll think Brad made it.”

  “You baked a cake for me?”

  “I’m freezing it. So come back.”

  She straightened her uncle’s glasses; one stem was taped. “Okay.”

  He held up the Maltese. “Say goodnight and good luck, Malpy.”

  Lightning lit the distant sky and thunder echoed along the tin roof of Destin Airworks. Jumping out of Clark’s arms, the dog raced off into the darkness.

  Sam was wet through by the time she ran back into the hangar. “Annie, I changed my mind. Let’s do call the St. Louis cops. You’re right. Let the police find Jack! You stay out of it.”

  Annie retied her shoes. “No, you were right. If we try to bring in the police, he’ll either disappear or shut down. If he’s got something to tell me about my mother, now’s when he’ll do it.”

  Sam frowned. “Remember, you can’t believe everything he says.”

  “Don’t warn me. I’m the one who lived with him. I’m the one he almost took twenty-five thousand dollars for.”

  Sam sighed. “Oh, he just saw that in some old movie.” She patted Jack’s leather jacket, which Annie was now wearing. “What I mean is, you may not find out what you want about your mother.”

  Annie kissed Sam’s cheek. “Then I won’t. Stop worrying.”

  “When I’m dead, I’ll stop worrying.” Sam looked out at the rain. “So tell Jack from me: Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Like die?”

  “Like die; don’t do anything stupid like that.” She tapped Annie’s nose and stepped away from her. “Either one of you.”

  “I promise.” Annie climbed up onto the wing.

  Lights on the run
way glimmered in the hard rain. Clark stepped back to the little television screen to watch the red splotch on the Doppler moving toward them.

  While Clark was looking at the weather report, Annie waved at Sam and climbed briskly into the cockpit. Sam watched the propeller turn over, catch, and the little plane head out onto the tarmac.

  D. K. Destin’s growling voice crackled into Annie’s headphones when she reached the end of the ramp. “Tower One to King of the Sky. You got that big maple to clear. You see it?”

  “Roger.”

  “You always cut it too close, Annie. And it’s bigger’n it used to be. Wind gusting to 22 knots. Go ahead.”

  “D. K., you don’t have a Tower One. You’re sitting in a pickup truck and you always say Tower One. Like there’s a Tower Two?”

  “You crack me up, baby. Go ahead.”

  She turned the nose of the rattling Warrior into the wind, pushed the throttle forward, squeezed her fingers around the plane’s yoke and headed it bucking in protest down the runway. “Don’t call me baby, you sexist child of your times. Departing runway 27.”

  “Wind fifteen…eighteen, nineteen. Too much wind. Roger that? Taxi back? Taxi back. Roger that?”

  “Negative. I’m good to go. Thank you. Go ahead.” The windsock flapped frenziedly. Annie had a breathtaking sensation—a kick of the heart—that she was making a stupid mistake and couldn’t even say why. She peered out across the airfield. There they stood, under the light, Sam and Clark, huddled in the hangar doorway, wet through, waving to her. Above them fluttered D. K.’s huge tattered banner with its hand-stitched black eagle flapping wildly as if fighting hard not to fall from the sky. She waved back at her aunt and uncle, although she knew they could barely see the plane, much less her face inside it.

  The radio spluttered. “You listening to me, Annie? Go ahead.”

  “Roger. Departing VFR westbound. Over.”

  Why in God’s name had she insisted on going to St. Louis in the King of the Sky? Even if Rafael Rook (whoever he was) was right that Jack Peregrine was dying and that seeing Annie was his dying wish, why should Jack Peregrine get his dying wish? Clark and Sam, far more deserving, had had many wishes that had never come true. Why should she respond to a request for help, or unearned forgiveness, or whatever he wanted this plane for? Why, against all reason, including her own (she knew far better than Clark and Sam the danger in the sky tonight), had she felt (as undeniably as she felt hunger or cold) that whatever it took so she could have this talk with her father, she would do it? That if it took her flying a rattling thirty-one-year-old Piper Warrior into a storm that had caused the cancellation of all commercial flights, she could fly it. She would just head west-northwest, 290 degrees, and slip around the weather system, and fly herself to St. Louis. She would do it because, as the odd Rafael Rook had predicted, she could not take it or leave it.

  D. K.’s voice rumbled. “Wind sixteen. Down to fourteen, ten. Okay, Annie, ain’t no mountain high enough. Go!”

  Halfway down the runway, she eased slightly off the throttle, pressed her face against the dirty window, her eye on the windsock under the light on the hangar roof.

  “Baby, what the fuck you doing? Left rudder, full throttle, full throttle.”

  “D. K.! Stop mothering me!”

  She watched the sock flick backwards, fall, quickly fill again, unfurling full and straight, pointing away. Oddly she suddenly remembered a rainy night, when she’d sat next to her father at the steering wheel of his red Mustang in the predawn quiet of some big city intersection. There was a soft rain so shiny black on the streets that they’d lost their boundaries; buildings shimmered in black pools broken by splashes of traffic. There was a fat man in the backseat of the car. Her father was betting this man that he could drive thirty blocks hitting green lights without ever having to stop for a red one.

  In the Warrior now, all these years later, it was as if she could feel her father’s leaning over her, rubbing his face softly in her hair and whispering, “Darlin’, the readiness is all.” The car jumped forward. She could hear her laugh joining his as block after rainy block flew by, green, and green, and green.

  Annie went fast to full throttle. Lightning pulsed in the clouds, silhouetting the wall of trees. She let the wind take the plane as if a giant had lifted it in the palm of a hand and moved her over the treetops. With a tip of one bright wing shaking leaves from the tallest maple, she left home behind her.

  D. K. Destin’s voice crackled in her ears. “Mustang Annie, who do you owe?”

  “Baby, it’s you…” Annie saw a far-off jet approaching from the southeast. “Hey, you got something coming in. Private jet? Over.”

  “Fuck, yeah! Hot spot tonight. Nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide, go ahead.”

  “Love you, D. K., over and out.”

  Chapter 19

  Honor among Lovers

  Shortly after the little Warrior soared away, a huge roaring noise suddenly shook the hangar at Destin Airworks and a white jet landed and taxied back to not far from where Sam and Clark were still standing beneath the overhang. The jet’s bold insignia Hopper Inc. glistened in the big yellow arc light. Brad Hopper leaped out of the cockpit in a crouch, tenting a briefcase over his head against the rain.

  He ran up to Sam and Clark, said “Aw, shit!” and cupped his hands to look out at the black sky. “Was that Annie? Did she just fly out of here?”

  Clark yelled above the noise of the still-humming jet. “I swear, we really postponed the birthday party. We’re not having it without you.”

  “We told you it was canceled, Brad!” Sam hugged him.

  The handsome young man ignored Clark as he hugged Sam back. “Hi, Sam. Was that Annie?”

  “Brad! Jesus, I can’t believe you’re here! She took off five minutes ago. She’s flying the King of the Sky to St. Louis.”

  “In this storm?! I figured D. K. wouldn’t let her go till morning.” From his raincoat pocket Brad pulled out a small velvet jewelry box with a black silk bow. It was as hip as his stylish black jacket and square-toed shoes. “I had everything planned. I was going to propose.” He stared at the ring box, perplexed, as if it had tricked him.

  “You don’t need to propose. You’re married to her,” Clark reminded him grouchily.

  Sam stepped between them. “She needs help. Go to St. Louis, Brad. If you miss her at the airport, try the Royal Coach Motel.” She touched his face. “You’ve got a mustache. That’s new.”

  “Yeah. You like it?” Brad touched his fingers to the trim black mustache.

  “It looks good.”

  Clark rapped her shoulder. “Sam!”

  Brad stared at one, then the other, uncertain.

  She shoved him. “Go, go on. ‘Just raise your hand up, Chief.’”

  Not sure what she meant by the “Chief” remark, Brad nonetheless felt moved to kiss Sam. “Where’s that wankhead D. K.?”

  Clark pointed to the lights of D. K.’s “office,” a trailer nearer the runway. Brad ran off through the rain in that direction.

  “You’re crazy,” Clark told Sam. “Why are you encouraging him? Don’t encourage him.”

  “Oh Clark, she’s got to marry somebody. She wants to have a baby.”

  “Says you. Besides, that’s no reason to marry the same somebody twice. How many times does she have to be Mrs. Hopper Two? Or t-o-o? Two times?”

  “Funny.” Sam found a pack of Destin’s unfiltered cigarettes on a shelf crowded with engine parts. She shook one out. “You’re probably right.”

  Clark stared at her. “What the hell are you doing, smoking?! What about your vow to give it up if Jimmy Carter won?”

  Sam inhaled with satisfaction. “Yeah, well, the right wing outfoxed me and Jimmy both. Jimmy and Rosalynn are taping up Sheetrock in Uganda these days and neocons are running the country.”

  “Maybe so, but they’re only smoking the occasional Cuban cigar, even though of course they despise Cuba as an enemy of the freedom to hang out
in Mafia night spots where big shots used to be able to have a little fun.”

  “You’re getting cynical, Clark.”

  “No, I’m not. I love my country.”

  “And don’t think I don’t know you’ve been sneaking cigarettes for years.”

  They stood for a while, watching Brad’s silhouette gesticulate behind the dirty window of D. K.’s small trailer. Finally Sam asked, “Do you believe Jack was actually in prison in Cuba?”

  “It’s entirely possible.” Clark grabbed at the cigarette but the athletic Sam spun easily away from him and sucked in a long drag before grinding it out.

  After calling for Malpy, they decided to wait there for the Maltese to return from whatever exploration he was on. They stared together into the night, Clark leaning against a doorpost, Sam leaning on him.

  Sam sighed from time to time.

  Clark said, “Annie’s too smart for Brad.”

  Sam sighed again. “Smart? Love’s not smart. Hey, I’m not stupid and I opened a joint bank account with a woman who ran off with my life savings to Belize, and it was her investment manager at the bank that she ran off with. The bitches.”

  “Sam, there’s no honor among thieves.”

  “I guess they were really in love.”

  “Will you stop defending Jill?”

  “I want Annie to be happy.” Sam looked sadly at car taillights in the dark, hurrying away from her. “That’s all I want.”

  Clark laughed, shaking his head. “Jeez, our generation. Annie’s right. We still believe it all—true love, true grit, New Deal, huddled masses, anything your heart desires. We still think if you want something, you can have it.”

  “‘Keep hope alive,’ Clark.”

  “Were you happy? Why should Annie be happy?”

  Sam said, “Because in America things are supposed to get better.”

  Chapter 20

  Wing and a Prayer

  The little plane was shaking. Her fingers doing a drumbeat on her instrument panel, Annie cheered as she climbed through the turbulence. To her surprise, a single sharp bark echoed her. She shouted again. There was another unmistakable yelp.