Jim Shepard - Flights

Walter is not an alarmist. By no means is Walter an alarmist. He wants that made perfectly clear. If the kid’s arterially bleeding, everyone remain calm; if he’s slowly turning into someone we’ve never seen before, wait it out, watch and see what happens. Above all, do not overreact. His wife, you see, overreacts. I overreact. I scream and rant and ask questions and worry. I set a bad example. I get the kids all worked up. I give the kids ideas. I’m never satisfied and I’m always wrong. That might be a good rule to keep in mind here all the time: Judy is always wrong. Judy does not support this — mania for sports, one after another, season in, season out: Judy is wrong. Judy thinks we should talk a little, that we have to talk a little, to try and make the kids a little less impenetrable: Judy’s wrong. Judy wants to do some of the things normal families do: Judy is a pain in the ass. But I’ll tell you this: I saw trouble coming with these two long before I spoke up, and I spoke up a hell of a long time ago. I love these kids and I’ve loved them and agonized over them every step of the way and no one’s going to tell me at this point that I’m the only villain in this thing. Judy might’ve made some mistakes, but I’ll be goddamned if she made all of them.

There was a rope swing at the end of Prospect Drive, the street perpendicular to Biddy’s, which was long and knotted and hung from high in the branches of an old oak. Prospect Drive, which ran the length of Lordship from the salt marshes to the Gun Club, met the salt marsh abruptly at that oak, the pavement and earth covering the roots dropping away to expose four feet of yellowish dirt running into cattails and reeds. Motorists were expected to have turned left for Long Beach or Lordship Boulevard by that point.

He had swung on the rope once, the grass below worn through to form a runway of dirt that fell away as he swept high over the reeds, the brown fur of the cattails waving up at him. It was slipperier than it looked.

One of Biddy’s friends, Teddy Bell, lived nearby, on Oak Bluff. Teddy had serious fights with his older brother, Neil, fights of frightening intensity, four or five times a week. Teddy was Biddy’s classmate and Neil a year older. They came to blows over everything. Neil had once tried to break his brother’s arm by levering it across his leg. Friends had pulled them apart. Their fights were approaching legend in the neighborhood and Biddy had seen three, convinced during each that one brother or the other would not survive.

And one day Teddy broke his wrist on the rope swing. He slipped off on the downswing. He came home crying and was mocked and goaded until his wild temper broke loose and he went after his older brother with a shriek and one arm, and Neil, who usually won anyway, beat him up. Their father separated them and threw Neil bodily out of the house—“The goddamn kid’s got a hurt arm!” he’d yelled — and Neil, panting, still full of energy, had stalked past Teddy’s friends, wide-eyed witnesses, down the block to the rope swing, out of sight behind the oak, and had fallen himself minutes later, breaking both wrists. He had returned running and crying, holding both hands in front of him with his elbows next to his belly. When Teddy, waiting to be driven to the hospital, saw him, he’d managed to laugh, and Neil had gone through the car window after him. Teddy’s friends had stood unable to move as they kicked, wrestled, pulled, and scratched, tumbling half in, half out of the car with one unbroken wrist between them. Their father separated them again.

“Imagine that,” someone had said to Biddy on the way home. “Imagine how much it must’ve hurt to beat up his brother with two broken wrists?”

Later that day Biddy had helped his mother with the macchina, the macaroni machine. They were making homemades. Kristi sat at the kitchen table nearby, forming peanuts into rows. He was still shaken by the fight, and he guided the long macaroni strips like flat soft tongues away from the machine’s rollers as his mother cranked. The machine was clamped to the table but still shifted and squeaked. As the pale ribbons would emerge Biddy would drape them, like diminutive scarves, over towels on the backs of chairs. His sister had assembled a row of peanuts fully a foot long, and had refused to tell either of them why.

His mother fed already thin strips expertly into the crack between the stainless-steel rollers with one hand, cranking rhythmically with the other. He lifted the thinner sheets as they emerged, palms supporting the cool, elastic weight. He could see Neil’s flailing legs, the ferocity of the speed of the blows, Teddy’s foot stomping wide of his brother’s face. “Did kids fight a lot when you were a kid?” he asked his mother.

“As much as they do now, I guess,” she answered. “Watch the end of that. It’s going to bunch.”

“Did you used to fight?” He carried a moist and pliant strip to a chair.

“I’m sure I was no brighter than anybody else. Aunt Sandy and I used to have real fights. She hit me on the head with a bottle once.”

Biddy flinched. “Did it break?”

His mother laughed. “No. It was a Coke bottle. I had a huge bump, though.”

He envisioned his mother on her rear with the bottle nearby, slightly stunned in the backyard of his grandmother’s old home.

“Once I pushed her into the street, and she hit a fire hydrant, I think. We were about even, overall.”

Biddy supported macaroni, palm crossing under palm to cradle the emerging piece. The image of his mother as having once been very much like his sister unnerved him, seemed to make the kitchen slightly unsteady beneath his feet. He felt separated, again.

“I don’t get into many fights,” he said, his words half confession, half offering.

“Well your sister does fine for both of you,” his mother said, adjusting the rolling thickness.

Kristi swept her hands across the peanuts, one ticking loudly off the floor. “I’m just sitting here and even then you pick on me,” she said.

Teddy was an altar boy on Biddy’s team, and served with the broken wrist. He looked heroic, Biddy’s mother said. Father Rubino referred to him now and then as the walking wounded. Teddy was bored with the whole thing and was planning to quit.

Every four weeks they were assigned seven-thirty Mass and Teddy came down with an ailment. This Sunday two others on the four-man team did as well. Biddy was left to go it alone, which he knew to be exceedingly difficult, even if the priest was extraordinarily patient and helped out. And Father Rubino was not extraordinarily patient and did not ever think to help out.

The Mass was always deserted. He counted eight people in the pews. He yawned, peeking out of the sacristy, fumbling with the cassock around his shoulders.

Father waited a full two minutes longer than usual before finally asking irritably if his friends were coming or what. Biddy couldn’t say. He rubbed his eye and straightened his cassock. Father gestured him out and fell in step behind him at the sound of the organ, and he led the two-person procession embarrassed, half asleep, and beginning to wonder if he could handle everything on the altar alone. Father followed, muttering.

He performed erratically. He was late covering the chalice, slow with the wine and water, and forgot the bells during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, and Father turned to him and said piercingly, “The bells.” Scattered among the pews eight people shifted and coughed.

During Communion, he let the plate drop and was told sharply to hold it up, at which point he jerked it into a sleepy woman’s throat, causing her to gag.