Flying Too Close to the Sun

by George Jehn

  “I ask for help and instead you’re throwing me out?” Erik said in disbelief, breathing in and out through his mouth, trying to keep the twenty-plus year reservoir of rage from breaking his personal dam.

  A livid Joe lifted his right palm up to his face. “This says, out.” Then he lifted the left. “Oh, too bad, this one says the same thing.” Next, the glass of booze went to his mouth with a smirk on his face. “Looks like you lose either way.” Ursula put a hand to her mouth and gasped, but he cast a shut up look her way.

  Erik ground his molars so hard he thought they might crack. As despair engulfed him he looked pleadingly to his mother. She sat with frigid immobility, unable or unwilling to utter anything. She finally turned up her palms, got up and left the room.

  In the immaculate kitchen her body shook and she cupped her chin in her hands. Should she tell Erik the reason Joe harbored such bitterness? She said nothing.

  You can’t argue with an irrational person. Yet so much repressed hurt surfaced Erik’s immediate urge was to vent everything, by stating he had long known of his mother’s infidelity and just to rub it in, adding that he applauded what she’d done. That would hurt, but Joe’s response would probably be explosive. So he went to the closet and pulled out the suitcase he used while away during flight engineer school. A breath of stale air was released as he opened it and he threw in some of his belongings.

  He knew what had to be done. He went to his parent’s bathroom as the cigarette and booze perfume followed him and he grabbed Joe’s toothbrush and secured it in a Ziploc baggie. Although no longer trapped behind invisible bars of unremitting fear, he still didn’t feel liberated. His shoulders drooped as he slammed the door and drove away from the immaculately kept house on Violet Lane, with only grim expectations and smoldering loathing as companions. The night exploded and anxiety engulfed him while driving. A time that should have been one of celebration over his new job and first love, was instead an impending disaster. He had to get back on course. Carol was all he had left. Would she be there for him?

  After Erik left, Ursula implored Joe, “Please. Help him.”

  “Why?” he responded with a wave of his hand. “He screwed a bank and would do the same to me. You want to lose this house and live in poverty? We’ll rent out his room to someone else and charge more.” After a moment of awkward silence he snarled, “He certainly doesn’t take after his father. But you already know that, don’t you? Cheating seems to be a common trait in both of you.” He stormed upstairs and slammed the bedroom door.

  . . .

  While driving aimlessly Erik contemplated his father’s actions. Even during times when nothing seems to go right, children are supposed to be a source of joy. He would get proof, one way or the other whether or not he fit that definition. As his thoughts began to focus, the idea of spending the night alone in a hotel room didn’t sit well. He recalled a flyer posted in the operations office stating there was a room available in a small commuter apartment near the pilot ghetto. There would probably be at least a half-dozen other pilots and the rent most likely wouldn’t be cheap, but he wouldn’t be alone. He drove to the airport and called the number. The place was still available. The landlord offered the first two weeks for free as an incentive. He dropped off his belongings and sat down in the kitchen. If a person swims far enough into the ocean you can lose direction, not knowing the way back to shore. He knew what had to be done, so he went to a pay phone and called Carol.

  “Can I come over? Now?” he hoarsely whispered.

  “Sure,” she replied, concerned by his tone.

  . . .

  Erik arrived approximately fifteen minutes later. “Let’s go downstairs. I have something to tell you.” Carol could tell his mind was running at warp speed. They plopped down facing each other on the couch and he fired off his story. “The bank contacted Shuttle Air and my job is at risk. I only have two weeks to make full restitution.” He paused. “And it’s not only that. If I get canned I have to repay Shuttle Air an additional sixty thou for my training. That would be almost a hundred grand. I asked my father to loan me the money because I thought maybe when he heard what was at stake, he’d help. But the dysfunctional bastard became irate and kicked me out of the house.”

  “Hold on. Slow down! Your father threw you out?”

  “Yeah, and told me not to come back. I moved my stuff into a commuter apartment near the airport.” Erik wanted to tell Carol every lurid detail of the heist, but couldn’t bring himself to do that. Maybe she would kick him out also. She was all he had and he had to hold onto her at all costs.

  “He knew you’d lose your job if he didn’t lend a hand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would he help carry the rope to your lynching?”

  “He said he’d have to take a loan on the house and didn’t want to take a chance on losing it. Bottom line, he doesn’t trust me.”

  After a moment she added, “We’ll work this out, together. He abandoned you, but I won’t.”

  Following another moment’s silence he said, “There’s more.”

  “More?”

  “There was some money on one of my flights and it’s missing.”

  “Are you a suspect? Did you take it?”

  Erik couldn’t bring himself to lie directly to her, so he skated. “It was a lot and if I had, I wouldn’t be in this mess.” He quickly related the information the police had given him about the money. To get off this subject he asked, “I need to look up a business address for another important matter. Since you have internet access, can I use your computer?”

  “It’s over there,” she said, pointing to the next room. Maybe he’s looking for a way to come up with the money?

  Erik returned a few moments later after having written down the address of a DNA testing lab.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Yes.”

  As she took Erik in her arms and hugged him tightly Carol got a reality jolt. This was the only man she’d ever loved and they must find a way to resolve his problem.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Throughout the seemingly endless night Christina Shepard felt like her leaden body was sewn to the mattress. With loneliness, depression and desperation now working twenty-four, seven she felt more akin to a person languishing in prison. Finally dragging herself out of bed, she peered through sandy eyes at the fuzzy numbers on the clock for the umpteenth time, desperate for light. She squinted through the filthy windowpanes, while gloomy shadows still engulfed the streets. Looking in the mirror, her normally dazzling blue eyes more resembled dim roads traveled only by sorrow. David’s spot in the bed was empty, like the now-bare spaces in the living room for the TV and stereo. She’d heard him enter one night but didn’t have the energy to confront him as he no doubt carted them off.

  The official start of autumn might still be a few weeks away, but Mother Nature was in charge and had no regard for the Roman calendar. It was as though she had her fill of summer and wanted autumn to begin. The gray dawn finally developed, a dreary day that presaged the early arrival of damp weather. Gazing into the mirror again, only exhaustion stared back with scraggly hair, falling out in clumps, thanks to her current anti-seizure medication more suited a witch on a broom than a jet captain. Aside from not preventing her seizures, the Gigotor had other side effects, like diminished hearing and inability to concentrate. She couldn’t wait to get off it.

  The dull morning light finally bled through the soiled curtains, but the streets remained a ghost town. She watched a man scurrying about, attempting to keep out the unrelenting dampness, his breath leaving a long vapor trail like a 727. Out of habit she began to brew a pot of coffee, but stopped. Angry at the world, she flung the empty cu
p emblazoned with the blue and silver Shuttle Air insignia against the wall where it shattered into a thousand pieces, exactly what she was trying to prevent happening to her life. She had heard crew scheduling leaving numerous voice mail messages inquiring if she was well enough to fly. She didn’t answer because unless the promising new medication called Keppra worked as advertised, her career was over. The many years of schooling, flight training, tributes from her instructors, television interviews, sixty-hour workweeks, all meant nothing unless something stopped the seizures. She held out hope because her neurologist mentioned his other patients whose EEG’s indicated irregular left temporal lobe activity like hers had experienced no seizures or other side effects while taking the Keppra. He was also happy to hear his fictitious patient, Megan Bauer, was staying with a close friend in Kew Gardens, Queens, when she had asked him to mail the Keppra to a Miss Christina Sheppard, with two P’s. But for now, garbled and unintelligible speech remained a real threat. Her partial complex seizures were very frustrating because although she knew what she wanted to say, the words wouldn’t flow. Hopefully, she wouldn’t experience any more until the new medicine arrived later that day or the next. Even if the Keppra worked as promised, she couldn’t tell the airline or the FAA because she would still be automatically grounded. David was the only one at the airline who knew and he’d better keep his mouth shut or she would threaten to expose his rip-off scheme. The threat of going to jail would make him think twice.

  It had been only a short time since the robbery, her salvation, had gone awry, but it felt like eons ago. Gazing into the mirror made her appreciate how fragile youth was and how fleeting it now seemed. She decided to call David at the number he had given as his parents’ home to deliver her warning, but a youthful female voice answered instead.

  “Please, put David on the line.”

  “Hello.”

  “Hi. It’s me. Who answered?”

  “That’s none of your fucking business.” A moment of awkward silence followed. “How much did you get?”

  “I told you, I never got anything. Not a penny.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Bye, Christina.” There was a dull click on the line and it went dead.

  “Don’t you hang up on me, you son of a—”

  Although her logic wasn’t fully functional, she still wondered if an accomplice of David’s had made off with their money. If so, he would take up with someone younger because he didn’t need her any more, but at least he was now out of her life. She would pass his name on to Juni the next time she saw him and let him handle the situation.

  She next dialed her former husband, Michael in Florida. Was it was sunny and warm there? She still had Jimmy and desperately wanted to speak with him, try to explain why there would be no birthday presents. He answered on the second ring. “Mike, please let me speak with Jimmy.”

  “You know the cops called here,” a nasty intonation in his voice.

  “Look. I wanna speak with Jimmy.”

  There was a long moment of silence until a groggy-sounding teenage voice came on the line.

  “Hi, Mom, why are you callin’ so early?”

  “I had trouble sleeping and figured the sound of your voice would cheer me up.” She forced a grin, as if he could see her from a thousand miles away.

  Jimmy moaned, “When’re you going to get me the new computer and printer you’ve been promising? It’s been a while, and—”

  She hesitated. “I’ll eventually get to it.”

  “C’mon, Mom. I really need it for school. You’ve been promising me—”

  “I know. But things haven’t been going too smoothly here.”

  “I gotta go. I have school today and need to get some more shuteye. Can you call back another time?”

  “Sure.” Standing on the edge of this warm sea of memories, but unable to plunge in, she quietly uttered the words, “I love you” and ran her feminine fingers lightly over a framed photo of Jimmy, hanging on the wall right next to the phone. She longed for a picture of Laurel to place alongside it. With the receiver dangling from her fingertips, she sighed as she wiped away the tears. No longer shining lights, instead her eyes were now desolate pools awash with painful emotions, but still able to see the dreadful shape of the future for Shuttle Air. Between the high-speed train and the larger airlines poised to jump into the lucrative shuttle market, the outlook was grim. The end wouldn’t come suddenly but slowly and painfully, presaged by pay cuts and labor strife, which would also portend the end of her small disability pay and retirement. History was replete with airlines doing exactly that.

  Meandering aimlessly, she touched many keepsakes while trying to relive what went with them; the framed articles written about her, including numerous pictures as the female airline pilot spokesperson; her first set of pilot wings, with all the pride and expectancy oozing from them; photos of a smiling much younger woman, surrounded by friends and family. She ran her fingers over the collage of images knowing she could never recapture their essence, return her to those happier days, a time when a younger and simpler life was filled with family, love, joy and anticipation.

  Flicking on the kitchen light brought to mind flying was always about lights. There were the seemingly motionless northern lights shining brightly in a black sky; breaking out of the clouds and seeing the welcoming runway approach lights; caution lights and the delicate lights of Saint Elmo’s fire dancing across the jet’s windscreen like threads during a nighttime storm. Then, there was the most important light—the one left burning in the window by the person you loved.

  Perhaps when she signed on to this voyage of life she had boarded a train or plane headed for a predetermined, horrible destination, but couldn’t or wouldn’t jump off now. She was committed and would ride this journey to the very end, whatever that might be.

  . . .

  Suddenly, she pictured those warm lights shining brightly and not through the prism of her memory. Those were extinguished. But even though the yesterdays no longer existed and she was no longer the excited young girl in those snapshots, the expectations lived on. If, no when, the new medication worked as expected, if need be she could get another flying job when Shuttle Air folded, perhaps something in the corporate jet field? She would never accept defeat and would always be the captain.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  When Erik completed two New York to Washington roundtrip shuttles, per the norm he noted any items requiring maintenance in the aircraft log. The copilot had mentioned the voice recorder had been only operating intermittently. “You want me to write it up?” Erik asked the captain, Charlie Sutherland, who went by the nickname of Skip.

  “Sure,” the handsome, gray-haired captain replied with a warm smile. “This plane will be on the ground for two hours, which should be enough time to repair it.”

  While the crew was reciting the Securing checklist, a mechanic entered the cockpit and grabbed the logbook. The rest of the crew departed and Erik was about to leave when the fellow mentioned, “You sure have hard luck with voice recorders.”

  “What do you mean?” Erik replied.

  “You brought in a flight a while back and I performed the overnight check. It was a different aircraft, but I discovered the voice recorder wasn’t working and when I checked further, the entire mechanism was missing, nowhere to be found. Nothing was written in the log, so I figured another mechanic removed it because the voice recorder circuit breaker in the aft airstair area was pulled. But no one here or in Boston knew anything and it turned out even though the cockpit indication showed it was working properly, it was nowhere to be found. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  Erik’s face lit up like a hundred watt lightbulb as he asked as calmly as possible, “When did this take place?”

>   “Maybe a couple of weeks ago, but if you want, I can get the exact date.”

  “No need,” was all Erik could manage, while quickly gathering his belongings. He almost ran over a dozen people sprinting to a pay phone, fumbling for change. The juices were flowing and he needed to speak with Christina, now. But recalling Juni’s words that the cops would likely place taps on their phones, just as quickly he decided not to call her.

  All Erik’s other thoughts were replaced with searing anger wrapped in rage. Hours spent trying to put the pieces together had resulted in nothing, but a chance encounter with a mechanic and voila, everything added up on a cerebral level. Erik took a deep breath and vowed to do what was needed—alone—then bring Christina and Juni in.

  . . .

  Before anything else could be accomplished, however, the bank deadline was fast approaching, quicker than water runs through a sieve and had to take top priority. A burden had finally settled in his heart, as only one way remained to resolve it. He nervously phoned Carol. “My deadline’s almost here.”

  “I know. What are we going to do?”

  “Can I come over? Is your father home?”

  “Yes. But—?” The line went dead.

  When Erik arrived, Carol got a whiff of fear wrapped in desperation as they descended to the basement. They sat down and Erik’s hands clawed the fabric on the couch, as if trying to gouge away the past. What was done was done, so he finally blurted out, “Would you speak with your father and ask if he’ll loan me the money? He’s my only salvation.” He never wanted to hear those words come out of his mouth, but the fear of losing everything meant there was no other choice.