Jim Shepard - Flights

“That’s too far,” Kristi said.

“Not for me.”

She made a face and he finished a short wall he could crouch behind, and then helped with hers. Their breath puffed around them and his feet were cold, though his hands sweated in the mittens. He curled his toes around in his boots. The air seemed to slip down his throat like water and leave him breathless.

“That’s good,” she said.

“You don’t want any more?”

“No. That’s good. Let’s go.” She knelt and started scooping snow together and as he ran back to his fort a snowball thumped against his jacket.

He called her a cheater, packed a ball together, and whizzed it at her. It sailed. It was hard to throw with down mittens. He kept trying but he had no control; nothing came close. One hit the house. He stayed low pulling another one together, and when he rose to throw, a snowball hit him dead center on the forehead, like a wet, easy slap. He teetered for a moment, the snow rolling off his face, and then flopped backward, arms outstretched, with Kristi laughing. He lay in the snow dead, a tribute to her aim, and then made angel wings.

Abruptly he got up, piling snow into a long line of snowballs behind the wall while Kristi’s throws landed around him. When he was ready he set himself, pulled off his gloves, and stood up, grasping a cold snowball in his bare hand, pivoting at a snowy second base and firing at his sister. He kept her pinned like that, flinging them in rapid succession, and then waited, wanting her to think he’d run out of ammunition. She raised her head and he caught the top of her hat and knocked it off.

“I give!” she called. “I give!” But he had a double line of balls left, and he pelted her fort, laughing; the balls, hardened in his hand before he threw, were starting to break down her protecting wall. He used an exaggerated overhand motion, discovering he could throw down into the fort that way, the snowballs disappearing behind it and his sister shouting with every hit. “I give!” she repeated, and finally, in blind frustration, she scrambled over the wall, rushing at him, head down, scarf twirling behind her in the wind like a tail. Laughing his aim was no better than it had been with the mittens, she stormed his wall shouting “I said I give” and drove her wet blonde head into his jacket front, toppling them both into a drift, laughing and wrestling, with snow leaking in everywhere and neither of them caring.

“Don’t think you’re going to get everything you see, because we’re only going to look,” his mother said. “Sit on the seat, Kristi. I slam on the brakes and you’ll go through the windshield.”

They were going Christmas shopping. Biddy and Kristi had changed out of their snowy clothes, Biddy finding a triangular lump of snow in his boot. They were coming along so they could point out a few things at the toy store. Their mother had little patience trying to decipher Christmas lists. Kristi had lost one of her mittens in the vicinity of the snow fort, and was kneeling on the seat, her hands on the dashboard.

“Where we going?” she asked after a turn. “This isn’t the way to Korvette’s.” They referred to the huge shopping mall in Trumbull simply as “Korvette’s,” the name of one of the larger stores, which had moved away.

“We’re picking up Cindy,” his mother said.

Cindy climbed into the back, smiling at Biddy and flipping her hair out from beneath her collar.

“You can get in front,” his mother said. “Kristi can get in back.”

“No, it’s all right.” Her coat was long and white and her hair shone against it. “I’ll sit back here with Biddy. Biddy’s my date.” He smiled, embarrassed, and Cindy scratched the top of his sister’s head in greeting.

“Where’s Ronnie?” his mother said.

“I told him not to come. I’m going to try and get his present today.”

“Does he still want that jacket?”

“What he wants and I can afford are two different things.” She edged a middle finger along the outline of her lower lip, checking her lip gloss. “He also wants Atari. Imagine that? This is a grown man we’re talking about. Biddy’s already outgrown it.”

He wouldn’t have minded one, but he remained silent.

“So what are you going to get him?”

“I don’t know.” She looked out the window. “He’d really like the membership in the health club renewed, but how can you give somebody that? Your fiancé?”

Biddy was hot in the car in his coat. They climbed the entrance ramp to the thruway.

“I don’t know,” Cindy said. “I’ll look around. A watch, or something.” She looked over at him. “So how about you? What’s new with you? Your mother tells me you’re in a choir.”

“Sister says he’s got one of the best sopranos she’s ever heard.”

“Really?” She smiled, raising her eyebrows exaggeratedly. “Another Caruso, huh?”

“Caruso wasn’t a soprano, was he?” His mother kept her eyes on the road.

“No, I don’t think so. I just meant a singer.”

They drove on, cars around them switching lanes in an effortless choreography. Cindy straightened a gold chain on her neck, moving the clasp around to the back. “So this is going to be a year-round thing, or just for Christmas?”

“Just for Christmas,” his mother said. “Sister thought it would be nice. I think it’s a good idea.”

Cindy said she thought so, too. She turned her attention to the road outside, and he watched the sun and shadow cross her face as they came off the turnpike. In the bright sun he could make out white hairs here and there, but in shadow her face was perfectly smooth. While they were parking, she peered into the mirror on the windshield absently, checking herself.

“All right, let’s get you kids out of the way first,” his mother said, shouldering her handbag. “Kristi, where do you want to go? That toy place?” Kristi nodded. “And, Biddy, you’re going to go to Herman’s first, right?”

He could wander endlessly through the sporting-goods store.

“Let’s do this,” Cindy said. “Save time: I’ll take Biddy to Herman’s and you and Kristi come get us when you’re ready.”

“That’d be great. You don’t mind?”

“I’ll look around for something for Ronnie.”

They split up and made their way through the crowd, Biddy fidgeting despite himself on the escalator down to the lower level. Ahead of him a woman had a large bag with a pink rabbit ear the size of an oar sticking out of it.

He threaded his way along the bottom floor, staying close to the larger plant stands in the middle and glancing back every now and then for Cindy. He led her past Koenig Art Supplies and Waldenbooks and stopped a few yards ahead while she poked her head into Hit or Miss.

She caught up to him and put her arm around his shoulder. “What’re you going to get me for Christmas, anyway?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“Nothing? What kind of sugar daddy are you?”

“Ronnie’s supposed to get you things,” he said, faltering.

“Well, you’ll never make any time with offers like that. Sheesh.”

They turned in to Herman’s, at its mall entrance a cacophony of racquets, strung and unstrung. Her hand left his shoulder and she strayed into the tennis section. He followed and waited before finally turning away and finding the camping department.

He circled tents of all sizes, assembled like crabs or moon landers on wooden frames, and plucked guy ropes, and got down on his hands and knees and looked inside. He examined two or three different models. When he’d decided on one, he pulled out a small pad he had brought along and wrote, “Tent: EMS Explorer.” There was a good chance they wouldn’t get him one, he knew. He lingered by the sleeping bags as well, but in the end decided against listing one, figuring the more he put down the less chance he had of getting what he most wanted.