Ken Douglas - Ragged Man

“ You remembered me, why shouldn’t I remember you?” She smoothed her skirt and gave a quick glance around the cafe to see if anybody needed anything.

“ There were only two waitress here when I used to come in, easy for me to remember them, but you must see hundreds of customers,” Rick said.

“ You were different,” she said.

“ How so?”

“ You flew every day, but you didn’t fly.”

“ I could never really understand what made them stay up. In the back of my mind, I thought I could fall out of the sky at any second, so I wanted to be ready. I may not be the best pilot on the planet, but I can put a Cessna 172 down on a postage stamp in a hurricane.”

“ I believe it,” the waitress said, still smiling, then adding, “My name’s Katherine Spencer.”

“ No relation to Susan Spencer up in Tampico?”

“ My sister, you know her?”

“ I live up there now,” Rick said, thinking, wondering if he could ask this woman for help. “Susan’s one of my best friends.”

“ You know how she used to work in the diner, saved up her money, then bought it?”

“ Yeah,” Rick said.

“ Well, this is my place. I own the Flight Room now,” she said.

“ Really.”

“ You’re in trouble, Rick Gordon. They’re saying some pretty awful things about you on the radio.”

“ I can imagine,” he said. “Why didn’t you get on the phone and call the police the second I walked in?”

“ Because Susan called right after I’d heard it.” She slid into the booth opposite him. “I remembered you and I brought it up. She said it had to be hogwash. She said she knew you and that it absolutely wasn’t true.”

“ And you believe her,” Rick said, wary.

“ We’re twins, not identical, fraternal, but we’re close. We think alike, no, not alike, the same, identical. What I experience, what I see, what I believe, what I feel, all that I am, she knows. Like I know about her. We talk everyday. We may live over five hundred miles apart, but we’re as close as two humans can possibly be. If Susan says it’s hogwash, it’s hogwash. I’d sooner doubt the sun was coming up in the morning than doubt her word. Now, how can I help you?”

“ I need to get to Tampico, yesterday. I have my old plane, but I can’t fly it. It’s been too long. I need someone to fly me up.

“ I’ll ask around. Meanwhile you look like you need a hearty meal. Meatloaf’s the special tonight. I can have it on your plate before you can blink. It’s on the house.” She slid out of the booth and true to her word, Rick was tucking into meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy in no time at all.

He was halfway through the meal when she returned. She slid into the booth like they were old friends, while he swallowed a delicious bite of her meatloaf.

“ I found someone,” she said. “I told him you were supposed to meet a pilot here to take your plane up to Palma-Tampico. He’s only going as far as Bakersfield, but it’s a start and it’s in the right direction. He’ll fly your plane for free, seems he got here a little too late to meet his ride. He thinks you’re a godsend.”

“ Sounds like a match made in heaven. Where is he?”

“ Finishing his dinner in the bar.”

“ Has he been drinking?”

“ No, he’s a regular, Bob Mitchel. Flew B-29s in World War II. Been flying out of here ever since. Teaches flying at Condor Aviation. He doesn’t drink, he just prefers the atmosphere in the bar.”

“ Hey Katy, that the guy?” a deep base voice boomed across the restaurant. Katherine waved as Rick turned his head. A big man, with penetrating blue eyes and a shocking silver mane, waved back as he approached the table. Rick started to get up. “No, don’t get up on my account,” the man said, hand out.

“ Rick Gordon.” Rick shook his hand as he sat down next to Katherine and for a second he felt like kicking himself. How could he have been so stupid as to give his real name. What if the guy had seen the news.

“ Katy tells me you want someone to fly your plane up north.”

“ That’s right,” Rick said.

“ You the same Rick Gordon that used to fly One-Six-Tango in the pattern every morning, before Christina Page bought it out from under you?”

“ The same.” Rick thought he was about to be busted. “How do you know about that?”

“ Worked the control tower for twenty years. I’ll never forget you taking off and landing, taking off and landing, touch and go, touch and go, but it was the power off, side slip, practice emergency landings I remember best. You’d dump the power halfway through the downwind, go into the slip and drop like a rock, then straighten out at the last possible instant and set it down, squeaking the wheels on the numbers every time. It was beautiful to watch. She sell you the plane back?”

“ Yeah,” Rick lied, relieved that the man apparently wasn’t aware of his present problems. “She wants to buy something a little bigger and a little faster and I kind of missed flying, so it worked out all the way around.”

“ So what do you need a pilot for?”

“ I haven’t flown in ten years.”

“ Shame.”

“ I really need to get up to Palma-Tampico.”

“ Don’t suppose you have your log book handy?”

“ You’re kidding, I haven’t seen it in years.”

“ But you have your license? They’re good for life.”

“ In my wallet.” Rick wondered why the man was asking.

“ Anybody that flies a plane the way you did should be able to get it back by the time we get to Bakersfield. I’ll grab a blank log book, by the time we put down, we’ll have gone through all the basics. I’ll sign you off and you’ll be legal again. Then you can fly the rest of the way by yourself.”

“ That’d be great,” Rick said, genuinely grateful.

“ Rick Gordon, that you?” Rick turned. “Just the guy I want to see,” Harrison Harpine, Palma Chief of Police said.

Rick’s heart sank.

“ I fell in love with the wide blade that day in Tampico. So shiny, so sharp, so right for what I want to do,” the Ragged Man said.

J.P. braced himself for the pain that was going to come, but instead felt only a small pin sticking sensation below his chin.

“ Open your eyes or I’ll shove it up into your brain.”

J.P. refused, keeping his eyes closed with all his might.

“ I’m not kidding!”

J.P. felt the knife break skin and he felt a gooey wet tickling as small droplets of blood dripped down over both sides of his neck.

“ Open them!”

J.P. opened his eyes wide.

“ That’s better. You see we can get along, you and me.”

J.P. stared into the man’s steel eyes and saw nothing there. He thought of the under-the-bed monster that had caused him so many sleepless nights shortly after his father had left them. Nothing, he had thought, was worse than that thing that lived under the bed, but he was wrong, there was something worse and that something worse was staring into his soul, holding a gleaming Jim Bowie knife that was dripping his very own blood.

His eyes must have held a question, because the big man reached out and ripped the tape off his mouth. The tearing, ripping sound of the tape was worse than the stinging pain.

“ What?” the man asked.

“ Are you the Ragged Man?”

“ Not so ragged, I don’t think.” The big man stepped back and looked down at his clothes. “Hmm, maybe I haven’t changed in a few days.” He rubbed his chin. “Or shaved. Maybe I am pretty ragged.” He seemed to be talking to himself.

“ Then you are the Ragged Man,” J.P. said, his hoarse voice traveling through a parched throat.

“ What the fuck are you talking about?”