Corcovado, Or Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars

"Oh? Where are you headed?"

"Desolation Sound," Ted added. "Been there?"

She smiled then walked off to grab their drinks.

"She's kinda cute," he said.

"Kinda?" Ted added. "Man, she's hot."

"Sounds like an Aussie accent."

"Is that it?"

She came back a minute later with his drinks, a ginger ale - and an ice-cold Moosehead , complete with cherry on the opening. She put the beer down - away from Ted - and put the soda down in front of him.

"You from Australia?" Ted asked.

"Melbourne. Been there?"

"Not yet. You been there, Dad?"

"Yup. Once or twice."

"My dad's a pilot," Ted sighed. "He's been everywhere."

The girl turned on him then, curious. "Yeah? You fly for an airline?"

"Delta," he said.

"You fly to Australia?"

"I've been down there. Sydney once, Melbourne a few times, but not on duty. When we had a run to Hawaii from Seattle, I did that for a while. These days it's mainly LA and San Francisco, sometimes Salt Lake or Cincinnati. What are you doing here?"

"Spending the summer here, then headed to McGill in August."

"I'm at Boston College," Ted added.

"Oh? What year?"

"I'll graduate next spring."

"What are you studying?"

"Pre-med, philosophy."

"Really? Me too."

He smiled when he saw Ted's reaction. "So," he added, "you didn't answer. Been to Desolation Sound?"

"No, I haven't, but then again I've only been here a few weeks."

"Done much sailing?" Ted asked.

"No," the girl said, then she just walked off.

"Too fast, kiddo. Ignore her when she comes around next time."

"Right. We gonna do dinner here?"

"You want to stay-put, or move on?"

"Stay. There's something about her, Dad."

"Oh, she's an interesting type, alright, but be careful."

"For me, Dad. Not you..."

And he had to laugh at that. "Don't worry, Paco. I'm not looking."

"You could've fooled me."

"Just trying to back your play."

"Okay...well, the menu looks good."

When she came back to take their order Ted didn't even look up at her.

"Maybe you could find some sort of middle ground," he said after she left that time.

"What?" Ted said, confused. "You said to ignore her."

"Give her a smile next time. Make eye contact."

"Jeez, Dad. Maybe you should be the priest in the family...?"

"You're right, Paco. Just be yourself..."

"Right. Nervous and unsure of myself. That's a winning combination, every time."

"Probably better than you think."

"Now he tells me..."

She came back with their salads a few minutes later.

"So, what's in Desolation Sound?" she asked.

"Killer whales, sea otters - and Nancy's."

"Nancy's?"

"Bakery. Best cinnamon rolls ever."

"Oh."

"You wanna come with us?" Ted asked - with a straight face.

"What?" - and he saw the girl seemed genuinely surprised at the question.

"Would you like to come with us?"

"For how long?"

"How long you got?"

"Let me see," the girl said before she disappeared back into the restaurant.

"Jeez, Paco...!"

"Hey, you said to just be me."

"You are direct, I will say that."

"You think she'll come?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"Well, she just got here, but she's cute as hell so the manager is probably hitting on her. She says she's away from home for the first time, maybe trying to earn a few buck before school starts - but figuring out just now that, with the cost of living here, she's barely going to be treading water. Then there are the visa problems..."

"Jeez, Dad. What are you - like some kind of clairvoyant?"

"Nope, but I have been around the block a few times."

"So, what do you think?"

"Don't be too surprised if she says yes."

"Really?"

She was different the next time she came out, when she dropped off their dinners. Not so distant, her smile full of curiosity, like her eyes were ready for the next adventure.

"She's coming," he said. "Mark my words."

"You think so?"

"Yup."

The next time she came by Ted pointed out the blue-hulled boat across the way: "See that one? Altair on the stern?"

"The stern?"

"On her bum?" Ted added, helpfully.

"Oh. Yeah?"

"We're here tonight, leaving in the morning, before sunrise. If you feel like coming along, you know where we'll be."

He watched the girl looking at his boat, wondering what was going through her mind, wondering what sort of calculus a girl made at a time like this. Unknown versus all the known-unknowns, an adventure versus a slow motion train wreck.

If what he supposed was indeed going on.

But then the girl nodded her head and moved off again.

"Well?" Ted asked.

And he shrugged, but maybe he smiled just a little, though he thought he already knew the score. "Just have to wait and see," he added - a little too knowingly.

"I knew it. She's coming..."

And again, he only smiled, yet he wondered why he thought he knew the answer. Jaded, perhaps? Getting a little too cynical about such things? Or...simply judging other people through the prism of his life with Barbara...?

"You know," he sighed, "it wouldn't surprise me either way."

"That's kind of a..."

"A cop-out? Yeah, I guess it is."

"What's wrong, Pops?"

"I think I need a change of pace, Paco. A real change of pace. I'm getting close to sixty years old, and I could retire then...in fact, I think they want to push some of us old-timers into early retirement. We're getting expensive, and a lot of us still have pension obligations the company will owe us. All these new guys? Mainly 410Ks, matching contributions, that stuff..."

"How long could you fly, Dad?"

"Well, a few more years, like four if I push it, but I could matriculate over to the training academy, teach there, do check-rides..."

"What did you used to call those guys? The Silver Eagles?"

"Yup."

"Could you do that?"

"I could, but I'd have to move to the east coast."

"Yikes. You wouldn't...?"

"I used to think I could. Now, I'm not so sure..."

"Dad! Leave Seattle? You've lived here, what...more than twenty years?"

"Yup. Year you were born. It would be hard, have to give up the boat, that whole thing."

Ted shook his head. "That's not you, and you know it."

"What do you think you're gonna do, Paco. I mean, really...getting laid is one thing, but..."

"Dad, I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a priest..."

"What? That's a big change...when did you start feeling this way?"

"Oh, I don't know. It's like the more science I take the more incongruent religion and science become. Two competing world views, I guess, but one feels more and more like a children's fairytale to me."

"You think medicine's the answer?"

Ted nodded his head. "Yeah. Maybe."

"Why now? Just exposure to new ideas?"

"Maybe that. But sometimes," his son added, pausing to take a deep breath, "it just feels like growing up."

"Ah. So, religion is childish?"

"I didn't say that."

"Oh? What did you say?"

"I'm not sure I want to spend my entire life cloaked in a mystery that, well, there's nothing about religion grounded in fact, is there?"

He shook his head. "You can't confuse fact and faith, son. You have faith, then that becomes bedrock; if you don't, well, it's easy to turn and walk away."

"But it's not always so easy, is it? I mean..."

"I know what you mean. That's why I'll never deny the existence of God, and why I can't go to church. I have my doubts about the whole thing, but I don't have the courage of my convictions so here I sit, still sitting on the fence, looking at life go by and wondering what the noise is all about."

"What about Mom?"

"I think, in a way, the question drove her to drink."

"Seriously?"

He laughed a little, inside, at his son's sincere expression of cluelessness. "I don't know, Ted. Look at the Irish...they brought Christianity to the British isles, and then they turned around and invented whiskey. Talk about cause and effect..."

"Is that true?"

"Hell, I don't know. One of the Fathers told us that in a history class...but then again, he was Irish..."

Ted shook his head. "Why do you think she drinks, Dad?"

"Because she hurts, son. She drinks to make it all go away, and maybe because she doesn't have the courage of her own convictions."

"What? How so?"

"Because she never had faith, either in God, or herself. She always found it easy to turn to anyone who'd offer to ease her pain...without thinking through the consequences."

"You mean, like, buy her a drink?"

He nodded, but in his mind's eye he remembered coming home early more than once and finding her and another man in the throes.

"What is it, Dad? What are you thinking?"

"About her."

"About her - what?"

He shook his head. "I don't want to go there, son. Like I said, there's no need now."

Ted shook his head too. "I know. I came home from school more than once..."

"Ted, please. Just stop. I don't want...we neither one need to spend any more time there than we already have?"

"I guess. Question?"

"Fire away."

"What do you think, really? Would I be a better priest, or a physician?"

"Wow, now there's a thought." He looked out at the night, looked up at the stars. "Maybe they're not as far apart as you think?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, they're both grounded in a kind of rigorous curiosity, and at the same time they're both concerned with helping people find answers about themselves, maybe even a path to their truest natures."

The boy nodded his head slowly, but for the first time he saw something odd in his son's eyes. A man's eyes. Thoughtful, full of questing, and not a starry-eyed child.

"Anyway, I doubt you'll ever be able to turn away from the Church, not completely. Maybe you'll just turn out like a lot of the rest of us...you'll go once a week and leave those mysteries to someone else."

"But, me? What do you see me doing?"

He shrugged. "What I think really doesn't matter, does it? You know, in your heart, what the answer to that is, and you don't need all my baggage cluttering up your thinking..."

"Maybe, but I'd like to know what you think."

"Well, of course, I'd like to see you find happiness. I think medicine would...well, I think you've got the right temperament for medicine. You've always been a kind of scientist, even when you were in Sunday school. You've always asked the hard questions, the kind of questions your teachers couldn't answer effectively. Their easy answers always seemed to..."

"They pissed me off. They still do."

"Still?"

"The answers never change, Dad. Someone is senselessly killed and there's only one answer. It's all a part of God's mysterious plan, or we can never really know why..."

"Which presupposes there's a why out there."

"Exactly. Which means an order, a purpose to all this, which is comforting, but..."

"So, what do you tell an old man when you find out he has something like pancreatic cancer? That he's going to die? Do you tell him the facts, turn him loose to find comfort in senseless emptiness?"

"I'm not sure I believe in the whole heaven and hell thing anymore, Dad."

"Then you just answered your question, Ted. Case closed. Do you want dessert?"

They laughed at that, and were still chuckling when the girl came by again and asked if they wanted something sweet to finish off their meal. She looked puzzled when they started laughing again...

No one noticed a woman, sitting several tables away, looking at them as they laughed.

+++++

He slept late that morning, didn't get up 'til almost three-thirty. He showered and put on his running shoes, then went topsides and filled the water tanks before he went for his run. There was a huge, forested park across the little inlet and he stretched first, then took off, as always sure running was the most stupid form of exercise ever invented. After fifteen minutes he was sure running was the greatest thing ever, and after forty minutes he was wrapped in the familiar warmth of his runner's high. He slowed his pace as he returned to the little marina, then walked out the kinks for a few minutes - looking at his watch only once as he drew in a few really deep breaths.

He saw her on the dock just then, sitting on a dock-box by Altair's stern, a large duffel on the planks by her feet - and he smiled.

When he walked up, she looked up and smiled.

"Sorry about the hour," she said.

"You brought everything, I see. Burned all your bridges?"

She nodded - but then she turned away, too. "Yup, feels that way, anyway."

"You sure about this?"

She looked him in the eye then. "Yes. You're a good man. I can tell that much by looking in your eyes."

"I see."

She laughed at that, and he did too. "It's your son I'm not so sure of...?"

"Ted? Oh, he's harmless enough. Confused as hell, but harmless."

"Confused?"

"No spoilers, young lady. Oh, by the way, my name is Jim. And yours is...?"

"Tracy. Tracy Singleton."

"Well, Tracy, I hate to ask, but do you have your passport handy?"

That seemed to take her aback a little...

"We may be boarded by the Coast Guard...in fact, odds are we will be more than once. They'll check, and as it's my boat it's my responsibility."

"So, you're a pilot? I mean, really?" she said as she pulled out her passport and handed it to him, hardly taking her eyes off him as he looked over her passport.

He looked up at her then, sizing up her choice of words as a record of her experience with people like himself. "Yup. Really."

"Can I see your pilot's license, then?"

He laughed at that. "Sure. You wanna come up, or wait here?"

"I think I'll wait her."

He nodded then hopped aboard, went below for his wallet - and he found Ted stumbling out of the aft head, rubbing his eyes. "Oh. You're up," he groaned, knowing what that meant.

"So is Tracy."

"Who?"

"Tracy. You know...the gal you're going to marry."

"Jesus!"

"Not likely, but you'd better put some clothes on, just in case," he added, as he made his way forward to find his wallet. He was out on deck a moment later, and he stepped down to the swim platform on the stern, then handed his license over to the girl - who in turn looked duly impressed.

"So, you weren't foolin'?" she sighed. "You're not a pretender, I mean."

"I take it you've seen your fair share?"

"That's all there seems to be lurking about these days...if you know what I mean?"

As if the words 'lurking about' weren't enough, there was the look in her eyes: distrustful yet alert, lonely - yet wary. Distant, like her special truth was hidden somewhere far away. The literal opposite of Barbara, in other words. Where Barbara had always been reaching out, looking for trouble, this girl had turned inward at some point - but she was too young to realize how inviting that was to certain kinds of predators. Her extreme good looks had probably invited too much unwanted attention along the way...and possibly obscured the fact she was running from life - if only from herself.

"I suppose it's always been that way, Tracy. You ready to come on up, or having second thoughts?"

She handed him her duffel, then looked at his outstretched hand before she took it.

He saw it took an effort on her part, then he watched her looking at all the stuff that made Altair work.

"Don't worry," he said. "You can just sit back and watch..."

"Could you teach me?"

"Teach you - what, exactly?"

"To sail."

"Sure...but Ted's a better teacher than I'll ever be..."

"I doubt that," the girl said, looking him in the eye.

"Well, let me show you around down below."

"Do I have my own room?"

"Yes. It's small, but..."

"Oh, that okay."

He led her down the companionway, showed her the galley and the head, then led her to the tiny cabin up by the mast. "Well, here it is..."

"You weren't kidding," she sighed.

"It's more an office - that happens to have a bunk," Ted said, now standing behind his father. "If it bothers you, we could switch places."

"No. I'll be fine here," the girl said.

Yes, he thought - as he looked at his son, you will be.

Chapter 2

His eyes were red, his mouth tasted like old fish and bug-juice, and now this. Someone in the Navy, somewhere back in D.C., had gotten a bug up his ass and wanted a bunch of Iraqi Migs taken out before they could, conceivably, get airborne - and thereby instantly shot down by the U.S. Air Force. There remained an outside chance, however small, that these Migs could break out and go after one of the carriers in the Gulf, and that just would not do. Like the guys on the flat-tops didn't need gunnery practice, too.

The problem, as he saw it, was that his squadron had just bombed the living daylights out of just that airfield, including bombs that had cratered the runway beyond recognition. The other problem? Someone at the NRO had just gone over the latest satellite imagery and one runway was, somehow and against all odds, operational again. And then more Migs arrived, screaming in low over the desert - and a half dozen AWACs platforms had missed them, too!

Ali Air Base was the closest Iraqi airfield to Kuwait, and, therefore, the Gulf, and so had been, literally, plastered two days before, just as Operation Desert Shield rolled over into Desert Storm - and he had flown six sorties in two days. His Intruder had taken several hits from small arms fire this morning, driving home the point that, as hapless as the Iraqis seemed to be, a 'Gomer' with a flintlock could always get off a lucky shot off - and thereby ruin your day.

The squad XO had rousted him from a nice, warm dream a half hour ago, given him enough time to grab a shower and drop by the air wing's dining room for a tuna sandwich and some bug-juice, also known as Kool-Aid. As he walked into the briefing room he began to regret the sandwich, and wished he'd tossed down two more Dixie-cups of the red stuff - on top of the four he'd already tossed down.

The Wing's intel weenies had set up an overhead projector in the little compartment, but as only three Intruders were being detailed to this sortie the room had kind of an intimate, less formal vibe going just then, until the CO walked-in - and all that changed - in an instant. Commander Dan Green walked up the lectern and looked at his small team.

"No use going over the hows and whys," Green began, "but Gomer has some new assets on the ground at Ali that weren't there four hours ago, and that can only mean one thing. Somehow, someway, we didn't get the runways as good as we thought. So, there are now eight Mig-23s on the ground, and ten Frogfoots. They're on a hot-pad alert, loaded with ordnance, or so I'm told, and we got Marines headed for the beach, if you get my drift...and Jim, you're taking 5-0-9 on this strike."

"5-0-9, sir?"

"We've apparently got two of those new AGM-84E onboard, and 5-0-9 is the only bird we've got with the right mod. You're also the only man in the squad with any training on the dash-84, and someone on the E-ring wants it used tonight. Here's your profile," Green added, handing over a hastily mimeographed series of altitudes and coordinates. "You're going to head out and arc around from the west. The missiles' tracks are programmed to hit the SAM emplacements, again, and the OPS building too, which we somehow missed last night. Latest satellite imagery has their pilots still in barracks, but they're fueling the a/c as we speak; odds are, they'll try to takeoff just before sunrise. With that many aircraft already on the line, the thinking is one or two might get through, and we're not going to let that happen."

"So, I launch and just boogie straight back?"

"Not quite. Your load-out includes two cluster bombs. Look at page three. You launch, impact should be within thirty seconds. The XO and I will come in from the south and east right behind your impact, then you'll come in from the west less than a minute after we drop; you'll drop on anything that's still moving."