So Many Stars

"What's that?"

"Stars. So many stars. I had no idea."

I hit the memory switch on my seat and it whirred back, then I took off my harness and crawled out of the way. "Take a seat," I told her. "The view's much better."

Once she was down I hit the switch and the seat inched forward, and she craned her neck until she was looking almost straight up. I knelt down, looked where she was looking and I pointed to Orion.

"See that bright pattern, there, a little to your left?"

"The butterfly looking thing?"

"Yup. That's Orion, the Hunter. He's drawing a bow..."

"I see it!"

"He's wearing a belt, and there's a sword hanging from it, over to the left. Got it?"

"Yes?"

"There's a fuzzy patch in the middle of the sword..."

"Okay, I see it, but it looks kind of pink..."

"Because it is pink, and it's pink because it's not a star. That's called the Orion Nebula, and it's a huge cloud of hydrogen gas. Now, I want you to consider one thing about that pink spot. You see that fuzzy spot because light was emitted from stars inside those clouds, and little bits of that light traveled all the way here, to this spot on earth. And it took those little bits of light 1500 years to get here, just to tickle the back of your eye."

She turned to face me then, and I could see a little smile through the look of wonder in her eyes. "I bet you're a great dad," she said, and I turned away. Turned away because she couldn't have made a sharper cut if she'd used a razor blade.

+++++

About halfway through the services for Nancy-Sue I tried to take Alice's hand -- but she pulled away from me. Stepped back a little, then turned and walked to the cars parked under barren pecan trees. I swallowed hard, tried to make sense of her hatred but I couldn't. I had no frame of reference. At least I think that's what I told myself, standing out in that sharp winter's wind, staring into the hole in the ground Nancy had just been committed to.

Nancy had asked that I take Alice, take her to live with me in Minneapolis.

In the second semester of her senior year?

When Alice heard that she laughed in my face. "Who the fuck are you?" she spat at me. "Some fucking sperm donor?"

"But..."

"You are not my father," she screamed, now right in my face. So she stayed at her grandparent's house, the home she'd lived in almost all her life. She disowned me, asked me to leave, to never try to contact her.

So I left.

And a few weeks later I got a letter from her. Asking me to forgive her.

I wrote back to her, told her if there was ever anything I could do for her, to just let me know.

Of course, I figured I'd never hear from her again.

What goes around, comes around -- ya know? Ain't that the way it always is?

+++++

I walked back to the head, washed my hands and face then went over to the little ice chest strapped down where the galley used to be and got a coke and a cup of ice. I popped the top and poured, then I heard her. Behind me, again.

"Could you fix me one too?"

"Sure."

"Would you sit with me a while?"

I turned, looked her in the eye. "Oh?"

"Look, I'm sorry, but I won't bite."

"I'm impervious," I said, pointing at my chest. "Heart of cold stone."

"I doubt that."

"You shouldn't."

"Why? Why do you think that?"

So I sat, I sat and told her about Nancy-Sue and Alice, even a little about my mother and father, all of it. And it hurt. To think about it, let alone pour this stuff out all over a stranger.

But Samantha was a good listener. She pulled me along, pulled me out of myself.

"What about your mother?" she asked me at one point. "Did you ever tell her how you feel?"

"You know, I saw her a few years ago, when I went home for Dad's funeral, and I thought about it. About telling her off. But really...what's the point? Open up that can of beans again -- just to get something off my chest. No good reason, is there?"

"Probably not."

"Yup. In the end she'd be hurt and I'd feel like shit for making her feel like shit."

"Well said."

Thanks. I put a lot of thought into that one."

"I was at Menlo, back in the late 80s. A bunch of Saudis there, at the business school..."

And suddenly I was all ears.

"They all had Ferraris and Maseratis, and by the end of the first week of school they had all the cute girls, too. I ran with that pack, and we were kind of, well, like their harem. And the funny thing about it was everything was kind of medieval. Like we were property. From the moment we entered their lives they let it be known what was expected of us, and that there was no turning back. The one that chose me, well, he was a prince then. He had a jet at San Francisco International, and weekends we'd go to New York or Paris. I was eighteen, and it was all very impressive. I moved to Riyadh after graduation, but we never married. He was, you see, already married. Had been since he was sixteen, something like that. And he had about twenty of us, girls from Europe and the States, stashed around different houses. Playthings, like a Ferrari."

"Why didn't you leave? Just pick up and go?"

"Because we couldn't. We heard stories about what happened to girls who tried."

"Sheesh. But then, here you are now. Free to leave?"

"Gray hair and wrinkles. I think I'm what you call past my prime, or a bottle of milk that's been on the shelf a little too long. Like I'm past my expiration date." She sighed, looked out the window. "They put some money into an account in Switzerland, for my years of faithful service. Can you believe that? Service? Faithful service?"

"Does the name Frank Cordoba mean anything to you?"

"Yes, Captain James Stewart of Minneapolis, Minnesota, it does, and you can bet he knows everything there is to know about you, too. And that everyone who works for him in a close capacity does too."

"What?"

"Oh, the colonel? He knows exactly who you are, where you went to school, what rank you held in the Navy...everything. That wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket, the one he gave you? Guess what? You're a servant now, a servant of the Kingdom, bought and paid for -- if you know what I mean."

"What?"

"Sure. Your pal, Cordoba? His old man used to work for people like Nixon, back in the day. Did dirty work for the party. You're familiar with the term? People who get in the way, ya know, kind of get moved out of the way? When Frankie met the prince in Menlo Park, well, the Cordoba family moved into the big leagues."

I was feeling a little sick to my stomach so finished my Coke, went to the ice chest to get another. When I came back she wasn't as talkative, like she had suddenly come to her senses and figured out it was time to shut the fuck up...

+++++

So of course a few week later there was another envelope in my mailbox. Alice was graduating from high school in early June, and she wanted me to come. There was another letter from my mom, too. Alice's grandparents didn't have the money to buy a prom dress. Things were tight, real tight. Could I help?

Could I help?

Of course I was on my way to Austin on the next flight, Alice's sweat-soaked envelope tucked neatly in a pocket. After I picked up the rental car and made the dash down 71, I got to my folks house in time to pick her up and drive her back to Austin. We had dinner and roamed a mall, found her a dress and all the doo-dads girls need to pull off their magic transformations, and it was like she wanted to bridge the distance between us, but didn't know how. I was content to just be with her, to walk with her and listen to her talk, because she was so much like the woman I should have...well, you know where that's going, don't you?

And that was the really odd thing. I think I'd rushed to be with her because Nancy-Sue was gone. This girl -- of ours -- was all that was left of something that had turned out to be important to me, and I know that sounds kind of screwball, like 'she's only important to him now because she's dead...' -- but it was more than that. A whole lot more.

We drove out of the city in silence, and every now and then I'd look over at Alice -- yet there in the blue-green glow on the panel-lights I saw Nancy-Sue -- then, about halfway home my daughter said "Thanks, Dad," and I kind of choked-up inside.

I came down for prom night, and again, a few weeks later for her graduation. I was happy she was happy with the way things were going, happy she'd decided to at least try. When she called me 'Dad' or 'Father' I knew she was pushing her limits, but one time she told me she couldn't stand the thought of calling me 'Jim,' or (God forbid) 'Jimmie,' and I don't know...somehow that admission cemented things between us in place.

I met her boyfriend, Mike, who by all accounts was a ferocious linebacker and smart as hell, and after we shook hands all he wanted to do was talk about flying in the Navy. And that conversation was weirder still -- the whole 'this kid could become my son-in-law' thing -- the notion that I might have this instant family grow out of thin air, magically come into my life, a grandson soiling his diapers while sitting on my lap...?

My father called me a few weeks after graduation, told me they'd been driving back from Austin that night and apparently Mike tried to beat a train at the crossing on the west side of town. Alice was gone, my father told me, and Mike would never walk again. I know I heard those words, but I think it was the irony of the moment that left me speechless, unable to breathe. The railroad had made all our futures possible, and now, through no fault of it's own, the railroad had just taken mine away.

I'm sure there's a symmetry at work here -- somewhere, but really, it eludes me even now.

+++++

Innsbruck was below now, a layer of scattered cloud hovering over that close little valley, but I could see the lights of the airport down there shining through. 'Here I am!' -- they seemed to call out -- "We're here if you need us..."

Here if you need us?

As the thought struck home I wondered what they were telling me, what I was trying to tell me about all I'd lost. Home? Someplace like home? But home was, for all intents and purposes gone now. Dad gone, mother in a home, a nursing home. Emphysema, congestive heart failure -- the usual end to one who'd smoked two packs a day for fifty years. Nancy-Sue gone, Alice too, and even the little house on the corner was just a memory now, sold to people just starting off, working for the railroad and with life still like a train in the distance, a future coming, things to look forward to.

What did Dorothy tell Toto?

There's no place like home?

I smiled at my distorted reflection in the curved glass, thinking 'Yes, there is no place now.' That little condo by the river seemed more like a jail cell, and the future I'd built for myself more than a little confining, like a dream. Someone else's dream stuffed into my head, crying to return -- home.

The radio brought me back to the present and I got to work, looked over the missed-approach procedures for Stuttgart and started working frequencies. Andy was taking the final, so I started reading through the pre-approach checklist, trying not to think about the lights far below -- under the clouds.

+++++

Mom was a wreck, a vast train wreck strewn all over the countryside. She watched her husband disappear into his grave, witnessed another hole in the ground swallow up her past, and I helped her to the car after, fearful of the reckoning that surely had to come now. I watched as a handful of his remaining friends drove up to the house and walked in, and their wives, as such people often do, came with them and laid on a Hill Country feast. Hams, deviled eggs, macaroni salads of every conceivable sort, all scattered from the kitchen to the dining room, and the survivors came together and talked about old times while they ate. My father's friends, engineers and firemen, tried to talk to me, tried to talk about how they'd cheered me on thirty years before, on that high school football field, but I was a pilot, I worked for the very industry that had crippled, almost killed off the railroads, and there was a resentment in their eyes I'd never noticed before.

Had my old man felt that way about me too? Had my life been a repudiation of his? Had I chosen to do that to him, to us? Had my life turned into one vast plot, for revenge, perhaps, for all those drunken, smoke filled nights?

I helped clean up after the house emptied, and I watched as mom went to the cabinet where she still kept her booze. She poured a stiff one and trudged off to her bedroom -- and she said not a word to me, shared not one passing thought. I guess there was nothing left to say, really, nothing left but the questions between us -- that would forever remain unchallenged.

+++++

There's one airport in Stuttgart capable of handling a 744, one very long runway with one primary approach. Pretty straight forward stuff, even in foul weather. Clouds were deep and dense, the air roiled with sleet and rain as we passed the outer marker, but Andy was handling it well enough.

I caught something in my eye out left and ahead, a pulsing beacon maybe, but then a little Cessna resolved in the mist, trying to...

"My airplane!" I shouted and Andy let go as I went to full power, began a sharp climbing turn to the right...

"Approach, Argosy 2-2 heavy, we've got a Cessna in the pattern, turning on final just ahead. Executing missed approach now," I told the tower, then to Andy: "Set up the go-around, would you?"

"Jesus Fucking Christ," Ainley said. "How'd you see him?"

"Beacon, just barely caught it," I replied, trying not to spit nails and cuss out the sonuvabitch in the Cessna. And at four in the fucking morning, too, but getting things back in the groove became the new priority. Resettled on the new approach, and I flew it on in this time. Deep fog was settling over the valley and we were about to go CAT III, a so-called zero-zero approach with no visibility at all, and Ainley expressed no desire to shoot one after seventeen hours on the stick.

+++++

I was getting off the aircraft one day in Tokyo, but someone from dispatch was waiting for me in the Jetway. Some kind of emergency at home, the woman said as she handed me the details.

At home?

But, I have no home?

Yet even so, there was a message from the police, home being that field of dreams Deep in the Heart of Texas. I called from the pilot's lounge, was told they'd been called to my father's house when my mother was reported out in the front yard, drunk -- and fingering herself -- and not content to simply shame herself completely, she'd started yelling at anyone within view -- to come fuck her. The officer responding arrived in time to observe her commanding a six year old boy to get off his goddamn bicycle and fuck her in the ass, and when he -- politely, I feel most certain -- tried to intervene she scratched the officer's face, tried to kick him in the nuts and otherwise acted the genteel southern belle. Not feeling jail the correct facility for her, an ambulance was summoned and she was subdued, strapped-down then carted off to a special hospital in Austin.

"How soon," the person on the telephone in Texas wanted to know, "can you get here?"

I explained the logistics and the officer sighed, asked permission to do a 'white warrant' on her, a psychiatric commitment that would put her on ice for 72 hours. Sensing I'd arrived at a moment of truth, I agreed with him, told him I'd get to Austin as soon as I could.

I don't know why, but the kid wished me 'good luck.'

Somehow, I knew we'd need it.

+++++

So many metaphors. One must be right for me.

Flying in fog, screaming through the night at 200 knots, and I can't see anything but a cluster of instruments dead ahead. I look up, look at the swirling ocean of mist around me, strobes pulsing white reminders -- 'we're right here...see us?' -- then that mechanical voice joined me in the night...

"200 feet..."

"160 feet..."

"100 feet..."

"50 feet -- retard, retard..."

I can -- just -- sense the moment of contact before it happens, when the mains hit and the hyper-choreographed dance of reverse thrust and braking begins, then slowing for the turn-out and crawling onto the ramp, shutting down a half million pounds of airplane and fuel for the night.

But it's morning. The fog is turning -- incrementally -- lighter, and for the people here their day is just beginning. I feel like I've been up more than 24 hours -- because I have; my eyes are burning and my skin is tingling, my body is screaming for bed and wants nothing more to do with flying...

But we had to supervise unloading the GullWing, fill out fuel chits and customs forms but it's all so easy now because we're flying the King's Mercedes...doors open magically, the curtain parts and we see the Great and Wonderful Oz pulling all the Levers of State, making magic things happen out of sight, out of mind...

And when I go back up to the cockpit I find Samantha -- Sam -- is still sitting by her window, looking out the platic, her eyes wide shut as another life parades through her reflection...

I go, sit next to her.

"Are you alright?"

The smallest shake of her head.

No, she's not.

Then she turns just the tiniest bit and takes my hand in hers.

"Do you know how long it's been since I felt my skin on someone else's?"

"That bad?"

"You have no idea."

"Anything I can do?"

"I looked at you when I got onboard and I've wanted you ever since."

"I see."

"Do you? I mean, really, do you? Because this is so much more than a burning fire. I want to be fucked, but I want to fall in love again, I don't know, maybe fall in love for the very first time. I want to know what all those things feel like -- because -- I never have. I feel like a slave that's just been freed, like a newborn taking her first breath, opening her eyes for the very first time, opening my eyes to the possibilities..."

"But?"

"Yes...but. There's always that big 'but.' They'll never let me live, Captain. I know too much, too many secrets. Where all the bodies are buried and all the money is hidden. I know things that would put most of the congressmen in D.C. straight into prison jumpsuits, and I've never heard from even one of the girls who left like I just have. They all disappear, so I take that to mean..."

"I get the picture."

"Do you?"

I nodded my head. "And I assume you think there's something I can do to help?"

"I have a plan, yes, but first...? Do you know where a good, soft bed it? There's something I need to ..."

+++++

When I got back home -- well, to Austin, Texas, but close enough -- from Japan, I found my mother in full restraints. Wrists and ankles tied to the bed, a catheter in place and an IV running into her right forearm. Her doc, a third year psychiatric resident, told me the primary problem mom was facing was dementia, but with an underlying schizo-affective disorder, with traces of borderline personality as well as elements of narcissistic personality disorder thrown in for good measure.

Like what, I told her, you think you're telling me something I don't already know?

She smiled. A nice smile. Disarming. "She's really put you through it, huh?"

"You have no idea."

She nodded her head. I think because she did know. "So, you were in Tokyo? What do you do?"

"Pilot, for Northwest."

"That's got to be fun. I've never been to Tokyo...what's it like?"

"Crowded, like swimming in the sea, in packed pods of little people all darting around madly, mindlessly."

"That sounds awful..."

"It's not. I love it."

"Do you go there regularly?"

"Yup. Too regularly."

"Look, I've got an hour for lunch. Can we talk about your mother while I grab a bite?"