David Fleming - The Saturday Boy

P.S. How do you like my chopper? Her name’s Buttercup.

When I finished reading it I read it again. I studied the way each letter ran into the next, the way his n ’s sometimes looked like h ’s and how there were some letters that didn’t look like letters at all but were weird squiggles instead and the only way to figure out what he meant was by reading the stuff around it. I had joked with Mom about it but Dad’s letters really were written in a kind of code. It was just a code I’d gotten used to cracking.

I put the letter and the picture back into the envelope and put the envelope under my pillow. Then I lay back with my hands behind my head and stared up at the hook where my Apache helicopter used to hang. Maybe it was because it was directly overhead or maybe it was because it was the only spot on my ceiling that didn’t have a model hanging from it but the empty space seemed huge. If it were a voice, it’d be yelling. I didn’t like being yelled at.

I got up, went to the linen closet, and found the hook-ended stick we used to pull down the attic stairs, reminding myself to get out of the way this time. The door sproinged downward and the steps came clattering out.

“Derek!” Aunt Josie called from downstairs. “Are you okay? What was that?”

“Nothing!” I shouted back. “I’m just getting something from the attic!”

“The attic? Why? What are you getting?”

But I was already halfway up the stairs and pretending I didn’t hear her. It was cold in the attic and my breath came out of me in little clouds as I felt around for the pull string that would turn the light on. I almost went back down for a sweater but then my fingers brushed the string and I grabbed it and gave it a tug. The light came on, dim at first, but getting brighter as it warmed up and I watched the shadows retreat into the corners. I wasn’t scared—I just hoped what I was looking for wasn’t back there in the dark.

It wasn’t.

The Apache helicopter had fallen behind some boxes and the fishing line was all knotted and tangled but luckily nothing was broken. I picked it up and used part of my shirt to dust it off, figuring I could untangle the fishing line in my room where the light was better. Then I clicked the light off and hurried down the stairs before the shadows could jump out and get me.

Untangling the fishing line didn’t take long and when I was done I got a sock from my dresser, put it on my hand, and wiped the rest of the dust off the helicopter. Then I took the chopper into the bathroom, got a Q-tip, and cleaned the spaces in between the missiles where they attached to the wing pylons and where the rotors snapped into the body—anywhere I hadn’t been able to reach with my dusting sock. I held the helicopter up and the light seemed to bounce off of it. I’d swear it was cleaner than it had been when my dad and I had first put it together.

I went back to my room, sat at my desk, and went through my drawers until I found my modeling paints and a brush. Using white paint, I very carefully wrote the word ‘Buttercup’ underneath the cockpit on both sides, twisting the bristles into a point with my fingers each time before dipping it in the paint so the letters would be sharper. It was taking a long time but I stuck with it. I mean, drawing the scales on the piranhadiles had been harder and this meant way more to me than that did. After the paint was dry I stood on my bed and put the helicopter back on its hook. I looked at it for a while as it twisted slowly back and forth and was so focused on it I almost didn’t hear the tapping at the door.

“Derek?” Aunt Josie said. “You’ve been up here for a while. Everything okay?”

“Yup.”

“Can I come in?”

I opened the door and we looked at each other for a moment or two without saying anything. Aunt Josie searched my face while I looked at the ring in her nostril, deciding it must’ve hurt when she got it even though she’d said it hadn’t. She must have found what she was looking for because she smiled.

“You’ve got some updog on your shirt,” she said.

“What’s updog?”

“Not much, what’s up with you?”

“Hardly har-har.”

“Isn’t it hardy har-har?”

“Not this time.”

“Ouch,” she said. “Hey, what’s that paint all over your hands?”

“I was painting my Apache helicopter. Y’know—the one Dad and I built? The one Mom took down without asking? I painted ‘Buttercup’ on it.”

“You painted flowers on a war helicopter?”

“I painted the word ‘Buttercup.’ That’s her name. Dad said so in the letter.”

I showed Buttercup to Aunt Josie and I showed her the photograph. I didn’t show her the letter though, because it was private and none of her business. But not in a bad way. She told me I did a killer job on the lettering and that a lot of tattoo artists didn’t like to do it because it was really tough to get just right.

“I’ve gotta get dinner started,” she said. “Wanna come give me a hand? I totally get it if you don’t want to though.”

I told her I’d be down in a few minutes and she gave me a hug and said okay. When she was gone I hung Buttercup back on her hook, lay down on my bed, and watched her swing. When she stopped moving I went downstairs and found Aunt Josie in the kitchen chopping carrots, humming along to a song on the radio.

“What’re you listening to?”

“Oingo Boingo,” she said. “C’mon—dance with me!”

“What? No, wait… what are you doing?”

“The Shopping Cart.”

“What?”

“You’ve never heard of the—oh, you poor boy.”

She showed me how to do the Shopping Cart. And the Sprinkler. And my favorite—the Fisherman. Then we just held hands and twirled around the kitchen and even though I hadn’t wanted to dance at first I was kinda sad when the song ended and we stopped. I grabbed a piece of carrot off the cutting board and popped it in my mouth.

“Save some for the salad, please,” she said.

Aunt Josie picked up the cutting board and dumped the carrots into a big bowl that already had lettuce and sliced cucumber in it. She scratched the side of her nose and stared into the salad.

“What’s missing? What’s missing?” she mumbled. “Blue cheese!”

Aunt Josie opened the fridge and practically dove inside. I hoisted myself onto the counter, sat, and snagged a carrot from the salad bowl, popping it into my mouth and chewing quickly.

“Blue cheese, blue cheese… I could’ve sworn… aha!”

Aunt Josie emerged from the fridge with a plastic container. Then she pulled the lid off and shook some crumbled cheese into the salad bowl.

“Wait! Stop!” I said. “I think the cheese went bad.”

“It didn’t.”

“But it looks all moldy.”

“That’s because it is moldy.”

“Aunt Josie?”

“Yes?”

“Is there anything else for dinner?”

Before Josie could answer, a song by something called The Jam came on and we were dancing again.

The good news was that, in addition to the salad, Aunt Josie had also made baked ziti. The bad news was that she said I had to eat some salad anyway. I did a pretty good job of picking out the cheese but a couple times I ate some cucumber that tasted a little bit like feet so I obviously didn’t get all of it.

After dinner me and Aunt Josie did the dishes then went into the living room and put on the TV. We played rocks, paper, scissors to see who got the remote control and I won because Aunt Josie always threw scissors first. I flipped through the kid channels but couldn’t find anything I wanted to watch or hadn’t already seen like a hundred times already so I handed over the remote.