Théodora Armstrong - Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility

He tipped the can and the sweet metallic smell spilled out over the cave floor. The sound made everything come to life, a thousand legs rustling above his head. He scurried out, leaving a trail as the can clanged between his knees, the smell following him into the overwhelming green. He shook the can to make sure it was empty and tilted the spout to sprinkle the remaining drops around his feet. The knees of his pants were soaked in gasoline. He pulled out the box of matches with the wild red bird on the front and got down on his belly to better judge the snaking wet trajectory across the dirt, and the distance between himself and the cave entrance. Wiggling backwards on his stomach like a lizard, he sniffed at the ground. His fingers fiddled with the matches, a few spilling before he managed to strike one and light the line. The trail sparked and he leapt to his feet.

When the fire hit the cave a boom pushed the air out of his lungs and sucked the sound out of the world around him. He hit the ground, sunlight through the trees blinding him briefly before a thud of darkness swallowed him.

When he opened his eyes Ben was there, his mouth wide open like a fish gasping at the bottom of a boat. Face wild with delight, he danced around Henry’s head before yanking him up and slapping the dirt off his back. The blast had thrown Henry several feet. A grin spread across Henry’s face and Ben laughed even harder, the muted sound reaching Henry’s ears as though he were approaching the surface of a lake from a great depth. He could hear Ben’s muffled voice repeating over and over, “You’re okay.” On the way home, Ben leaned toward him, an arm around his shoulder and yelled into Henry’s ear, “You flew like a bird.”

THE ENTIRE TOWN HEARD the explosion. It woke Eli from his nap and sent their mother running down the front steps. It made windows shake all over the neighborhood and shot birds into the air. In town, people froze in intersections, covered their heads, or looked skyward. Everyone wondered where the blast had come from. Henry’s mother and father discussed it over dinner while Ben and Henry kept their eyes on their plates and ate quietly.

A letter came from Victoria, but the jar was never returned. They classified the spider as a common house spider, or Parasteatoda tepidariorum . Ben turned the uninhabited cave into a fort with a canvas door and camping lanterns lighting its insides. Henry almost never went back to the cave and when he did he felt uneasy there, as though he didn’t belong. He thought about the explosion often though, but only at night when he was alone in bed. Sometimes he’d see a trail of fire coming from his fingertips and radiating out into the world. Sometimes he’d hear Ben’s voice saying you’re okay . You’re okay .

WHEN THE MAYDAY COMES over the radio, my mind is elsewhere and in a distant enough place — up the trail that leads to the telecommunications tower, where the hawk perched on the steel lattice watches over the entire Kamloops valley — that it takes me seconds longer than it should to respond to the emergency call.

Temperatures were hitting the high thirties when I drove to the station earlier in the afternoon, leaving Angie sprawled out in a cool bath with the baby, a glass of red wine with an ice cube floating in it sitting on the edge of tub. Other than the heat, everything else about my day has been normal the way normal should be, routine leading me through another shift lost in small individual tasks — weather briefings, setting up voice switches, organizing flight management systems — the kind of duties you’ve forgotten before they’ve even been accomplished, the mind see-sawing away on that silky edge of boredom. Time has a strange way of unfolding in a dark room of blue monitors and blinking lights, a roomful of dead-eyed drones watching the sky on screens, the fickleness of clouds, the unpredictability of wind and electricity. Weather data is transfigured into notifications disseminated back into the sky, anything pertinent to an airman’s safe travel: turbulence, icing, lines of thunderstorms, wind shear, funnel clouds, fireworks displays, mine blasts, avalanche artillery. Information endlessly reviewed.

On winter days when storms keep the planes grounded, we pass the time between weather updates reading, doing crosswords, arguing current events that seem worlds away. No cellphones, no laptops or electronic distractions of any kind allowed on the Floor. It’s the idleness that gets me agitated and picking at my thumb cuticles while others around here delight in the boredom, tilt their chairs back, kick their feet up and brush the potato chip crumbs off their shirts, enjoying the blur around the margins of their lives. It’s no exaggeration to say I work with some lazy slugs. John breathes through his mouth for Christ’s sake, like a sick person. When I pack my bag for the day I don’t stuff it with car magazines or fishing tackle catalogues or porn. (I’ve seen John with the porn.) I’m not about to let my brain go to mush, all that brilliant fatty matter oozing out of my ears onto this glowing console. When I pack my bag I throw in some Chaucer, I stuff it with some Kant or Thoreau or some dry history shit from my student days, the thick annals of lives lived, the stuff Thom and I used to deliberate sitting under autumn maples on the frigid stone walls of the university campus. I let all that language rattle around in there while I wait on the glowing buttons and flickering screens of shifting stats that — if you allow them — get abstract real quick. I let the words percolate and it makes me feel good. It makes me feel better, at least.

“They could switch it up, put in something new,” John says, coming back from the row of vending machines.

“I don’t know, John. I don’t eat that shit.”

John plops down on his chair and wheels himself over to my desk as I issue squawk codes that transform into flashing dots as the radar sweeps past. Today is the last of a five-day run of graveyard shifts and I’ve lost track of time. John forces us to keep the heavy grey blinds drawn because of his “migraines” and the only hint of early evening is the bright sliver of light fighting through the edge of the window. I feel tired in a way I don’t trust, as though the lack of sleep has split my mind from its body; I’ve abandoned ship to watch over my physical self like watching over an irresponsible sibling.

“Something healthy.” John says as he paws through a bag of potato chips like he’s searching for a carrot stick in there. “Like popcorn.”

The hawk is an exercise of sorts, a meditation — something I’ve been trying more and more frequently — to take me out of this creaky swivel chair and away from the stuffy control room. My supervisor walks past in a polo shirt and black slacks cinched tight with a belt below the bulge of his waistline. I nod hello. I think about heart attacks. Their suddenness. The thump, whir of the struggling air conditioner. Back to the hawk. Sleep deprivation has a way of making you think in circles. John keeps distracting me by brushing crumbs off his belly, and I have to refocus — wingspan, hooked beak, talons — before he finds another scattering somewhere on his body and I have to start all over again. Sometimes I have the urge to pound John on the chest, right in the left quadrant, see what’ll happen, get a little colour into those cheeks. The truth is, at the moment when the hawk takes flight into the grey sky, gliding down the mountain above the treetops, I realize that I’ve never seen anything quite like this bird’s trajectory, and what a damn shame that is, and how nice it is to see something like this alone and from a great height.